Wagner at Glyndebourne is a tricky business. Despite two verbal warnings from the stage on the opening night, this distracted, restless and always slightly inebriated audience insisted on using Wagner’s hushed Preludes in which to settle themselves. The contemplation of death in love was somewhat compromised by the banal carolling of a mobile phone, and by a battery of dropped programmes and handbags.

Tristan is Glyndebourne’s only Wagner; and Nikolaus Lehnhoff has returned for the first revival of his 2003 production. Despite the presence of even this audience, the clutter of physical life is soon stilled into existential meditation in this most unphysical and spiritualised of stagings. It continues to work its deep magic, as Robin Carter’s lighting tints steely lunar beauty with an arc of sunlight here, a hint of rosy-fingered dawn there – and then returns to eternal night in Roland Aeschlimann’s great indigo womb/vortex of a set.

The human figures, in their austere medievalry, are monumental, statuesque. Movement is slow, sometimes almost imperceptible, and the sculpted gestures and physical angles of each character express the innermost drama between them – though Tristan and Isolde barely touch each other.

Robert Gambill and Nina Stemme return to their roles as the eternal lovers. Gambill still, if truth be told, lacks the real strength for Tristan’s might: in Act II the vocal engineering that had to go on to sustain his passion was all too audible. Stemme, on the other hand, is in glorious voice, as supple and subtle in her final Liebestod as she is fiercely impassioned in the opening sea voyage.

Katarina Karnéus sings Brangäne here for the first time: hers is a noble, compassionate presence, with an upper register flaring thrillingly into pain and fear. The malleable baritone of Bo Skovhus creates a no less strong and sympathetic Kurwenal. And René Pape as King Marke, slowly advancing from background to foreground in a crescendo of anguish, offers a magnificent performance.

There will be those who crave more visceral excitement in both the staging and from JirÍ Belohlávek’s equally considered, meticulously balanced and proportioned account of the score, superbly played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. But when Isolde returns, wrapped in the dark cloak of night, then stands, transfigured by light and eternal womanhood during the final Liebestod, there can be little doubt that, for those willing to step beyond their own concept of virtual reality, Glyndebourne’s Tristan certainly offers a way.

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