Katharina Wagner at first presents Walther von Stolzing as a paint-spraying performance artist and Beckmesser as a retentive, Reclam photocopying pedant (Reclam in Germany publishes a small uniform yellow edition of every great work of the nation’s literature, and many foreign ones too). Hans Sachs’s tie is messily undone at the Masters’ assembly and he chain-smokes throughout. He finds Beckmesser boring and amusing by turns but is riveted by Walther’s improvised creation on the Masters’ high table.

This nicely observed updating would be enough to sustain some productions for a whole evening. But, for Katharina Wagner, this is just the tip of the iceberg. In Act 3 she presents a volte-face of traditional alliances, interspersing that with representations of what she calls the piece’s “very unfortunate history”. The consequence of the nocturnal plots and riot in (a not yet flawlessly staged) Act 2 is that Sachs and Walther sell out and join the reactionaries.

Before we get to the Festwiese (with its Wieland Wagner-ish bleachers), the “blessed” Quintet is played as a parody of sentimental National Socialist family pictures, replete with Walther’s and Eva’s children-to-come. Then, in the entry music of the guilds and girls from Fürth, Sachs takes part in a dark night of the soul in which German masters of art in carnival-sized masks (including Wagner and Goethe) are overtaken by scenes of book-burning and anti-Semitic authoritarianism.

A new hero then appears in competition – Beckmesser. He performs not a self-parodying stumble through Sachs’s song but a staged happening more colourful and obscene than anything Walther has shown earlier (it could be read as a Nazi nightmare of “decadent” art, performed by the character often considered to be one of Wagner’s Jewish portraits). Walther then performs the establishment’s winning prize song entry in slushiest X Factor style and collects a huge cheque.

Wow! Did Wagner write all, or any, of that? Not literally, of course, but many people throughout the last century have thought (or even hoped) that he did. And, as the director comments, “in Bayreuth, above all, we finally need to address this issue”.

Some may consider Michael Volle’s Beckmesser a little too bel canto – he employs none of the comic vocal mannerisms that, say, Derek Hammond-Stroud uses on the Chandos Goodall set (10/08) – but his range of vocal colours and accents easily encompasses the range from suspicious pedant to wackily inspired improviser that he portrays. Sachs is a big sing for the ever-versatile Hawlata but he manages the tricky task of being faithful to both his Wagner family masters and no one may feel cheated by his serious delivery of either Flieder or Wahn monologues. Vogt (and Weigle’s accompanying) make his lighter Heldentenor as suitable for his role as his height and appearance are for this staging. This is a more consistent cast than that of Bayreuth’s recent Ring; the remaining musical performances, maestro Weigle’s relatively light and swift traversal of the score included, demonstrate complete identification with the production. But as all stage productions should be, this is 200 per cent a Meistersinger to see. In the best tradition of Wieland Wagner the great re‑stager, the 2008 performance of the production preserved here – the first “live” and Blu-ray filming from actual Festival performances – is already a little obsolete, modified annually by telling changes to soloists’ costumes and Beckmesser’s act in the song contest.