Librettist Francois-Louis Du Roullet summed up the general enthusiasm for the 1776 French Alceste – musically richer, dramatically tauter than the 1767 Italian original – when he described it as “the most passionate, the most energetic, the most theatrical music ever heard in Europe”. Today, though, this most monumental and – at least until Hercules’ incongruous appearance in Act 3 – unrelievedly sombre of 18th-century operas is more famous for the reforming manifesto of its preface than for Gluck’s magnificent music. Among sporadic recent productions, the 2006 Stuttgart staging by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito garnered mixed reviews. My reactions to this stark, modern-dress Konzept, set in what appears to be a school hall with an attached TV control room, veered between boredom and irritation.

Sporting a dowdy business suit and a dreadful auburn wig, Catherine Naglestad’s pill-popping Alceste looks like a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Cherie Blair on a bad-hair day. There is little interaction, certainly no passion or tenderness, between her and her husband Admète. After Apollo engineers the obligatory “happy ending”, she seems either indifferent or exasperated – if the aim was to show her traumatised, it misfires. And why append the six-movement ballet suite provided (at Gluck’s behest) by Gossec if there are no dancers?

Elsewhere choral solemnity is repeatedly undercut by the gym-mistress-on-speed antics of the chorus leader (the wobbly-toned Catriona Smith) and by Alceste’s two daughters wandering about the stage brandishing cuddly toys. What was doubtless intended as an ironic contrast between the poignancy of the central situation and the children’s blithe unconcern emerges as mere cutesy distraction.

Musically, this theatrically misconceived Alceste has its points. Constantinos Carydis paces the score convincingly, if not as unerringly as John Eliot Gardiner in the rival DVD recording, and draws stylish, alert playing from the Stuttgart orchestra. Despite her sartorial handicap, Naglestad rises impressively to the tragic grandeur of her music. The occasional forced chest note apart, her great aria of resolve “Divinités du Styx” is powerfully intense, while elsewhere – say in the exquisite “Ah! Malgré moi” – she can movingly lighten and soften her naturally strong, bright tone. Of the other singers, only Johan Rydh’s incisive High Priest approaches her level. The Admetus, Donald Kaasch, alternates between barking and crooning (Paul Groves, for Gardiner, shows how the role should be sung). As recorded, the chorus – second only to the heroine in dramatic importance – tends to sound too hefty.

I’m glad to have heard (if not seen) Naglestad. But if you want a DVD of what is arguably Gluck’s supreme masterpiece, Gardiner’s Châtelet performance is far more consistently sung, while Robert Wilson’s gravely beautiful, ritualistic staging – at the furthest extreme from the drab Stuttgart production – illuminates character while meshing perfectly with the musical gestures.