Though often a director of dazzling invention, Robert Carsen takes such a contrary approach to Tannhäuser in this production that, by Act 2, the opera itself begins to seem conceptually ridiculous. The central dilemma – a medieval Minnesänger’s struggle between the sacred and the profane as embodied by conflicting loyalties to the Dionysian Venus and Apollonian Elisabeth – is obliquely translated into the modern art world in which gallery retrospectives are big business (raising the dramatic stakes, sort of), but has the unfortunate side effect of having men in grey suits incongruously moralising about the benefits of piety.

Yes, it’s Sunday in the Park with Tannhäuser. Venus is his nude model. Dozens of paintings litter their studio. The Venusberg ballet is a lot of semi-naked male dancers plastered with paint and orgiastically rolling around on canvases, suggesting that creating art is a purely sexual act. Upon departing from Venusberg, Tannhäuser joins fellow Minnesängers on a dark stage with a half-open rear door radiating white light – one of many spare, expansive, meticulously arranged stage pictures that convince you the production might be saying something significant.

Once the opera’s setting opens up into the airier, lighter world of Elisabeth, characters arrive via the the opera house’s stalls. In fact, the modern street clothes worn by Elisabeth while singing ‘Dich, teure Halle, grüss’ ich wieder’ are so similar to those of Glenn Close in the film Meeting Venus that one has to assume it’s an intended homage. Carsen’s hallmark is twist endings (in his Don Giovanni, the title-character returns from hell unscathed at the end of the epilogue); in this production, Venus and Elisabeth are suddenly no longer in conflict with each other. They’re equal artistic muses, both modelling in identical white sheets.

That gives way to a coup de théâtre (I won’t reveal it – I’ve probably spoilt enough surprises already) that suggests Tannhäuser’s angst is merely the drama of his artistic process, which is perhaps more for a psychiatrist’s couch than the opera stage. Again, the opera seems reduced to much ado about little, though, in all fairness to Carsen, this is one Wagner opera with extremely questionable pacing (the Act 1 Tannhäuser/Venus break-up goes on for ever) and thus can prompt desperate directorial decisions to sustain a dramatic arc. The Götz Friedrich video, for one, has Venus returning in Act 3 curiously resembling the grim reaper. Too bad Peter Sellars isn’t reviving his Tannhäuser, in which the title-character is aptly played as a corrupt televangelist and which is the one successful updating of this opera.

Musically, the primary drawing card is Peter Seiffert, not the most camera-friendly Tannhäuser but among the most vocally compelling. When this video was shot in 2008, his voice was beginning to show its mileage (he was 54), though there are so many moments where he not only triumphs over the vocal difficulties but does so with gratifying richness of tone and meaningful text projection. The rest of the cast is good enough but not competitive with what else is out there. Some might not care because the two women so look their parts, Béatrice Uria-Monzon being a buff, suntanned Venus and Petra Maria Schnitzer projecting appropriate poise as Elisabeth. Once Markus Eiche gets past some untidy phrasing in the recitative for his famous ‘O du, mein holder Abendstern’, he emerges as a significant Wolfram. The biggest disappointment is orchestral, though not necessarily due to conductor Sebastian Weigle, since the stage vs pit balances don’t favour instrumentalists. Again turning to the Friedrich video, Colin Davis is a reminder how valuable a strong conducting personality can be in this opera.