It’s clear from about a minute after the curtain first parts on this Bayreuth Festival production that we are in very assured hands indeed onstage. Over a long period of work at Zürich’s Schauspielhaus, Christoph Marthaler and Anna Viebrock have invented a new aesthetic of “modern dress� representations (often, as here, 1950s) of the great dramas from Aeschylus to Brecht, inevitably set in painstakingly detailed, often shabby, interior mid-European courtyards. Onto this design Marthaler grafts an intricate ground production that can be both as “naturalistic� as conventional Chekhov (as here in the Brangäne/Isolde and Tristan/Isolde dialogues of Act 1) or as abstract and unrealistic as the hand-jive dances invented for ensemble work by Peter Sellars (seen here in Kurwenal’s “fight� with Melot in Act 3 and subsequent death). The employment of the Marthaler/Viebrock aesthetic for Wagner’s Tristan works in a manner that reinvents the wheels of both grand opera and 19th-century stage conventions about sex. For example, there are distinct “stand and deliver� moments – after the potion has taken effect on the lovers in Act 1, in the Act 2 duet, and in Tristan’s death-bed agonies. And growing sexual desire is expressed, 1950s movie style (think Audrey Hepburn), by the loosening of a tie or a suit jacket, or the seductive removal of a glove, finger by finger. Brilliant, because these “stagey� moments have been bought by Marthaler’s attention to psychological detail. As in all great stagings – and I have no doubt that this is one – a list of unforgettable links between text, music and action soon accumulates. Two such are the shy little grin Isolde gives Tristan when they both realise in Act 1 that they’re still alive and so in love, and the manner in which Marke questions Melot’s boasting account of having delivered apparently concrete evidence of Tristan’s infidelity (“Tatest du’s? Wirklich?�). It’s hard to know where to point the awards finger first in such a complete ensemble performance (and the revival director Anna-Sophia Mahler deserves credit too). But Iréne Theorin’s multifaceted Isolde, Jukka Rasilainen’s bullishly not-the-sharpest-tool-in-the-box Kurwenal and Robert Holl’s insanely (or Schopenhauer-ily?) calm Marke have to be mentioned in dispatches. Musically everything is fine under the super-experienced Peter Schneider. The Blu-ray version catches perfectly the sometimes lurid colours and texture of Viebrock’s work on both clothes and setting. Despite the ferocious competition (see above), absolutely unmissable.