ENO has been through a ghastly period, losing its artistic director, its chief conductor, a chairman, an executive director, the trust of the Arts Council, a load of its audience and much confidence in itself.

For those of us who think it by far the best opera company in London, it has been awful to watch, and it desperately needs a show that gets the audience roaring like a football crowd, as in the old days. Happily, Tristan, imagin­atively directed by Daniel Kramer (also the new artistic director) is that show.

Richard Wagner’s 1865 piece is the most extreme work, distilling opera into something that shattered the musical world. For Wagner the essence of music was yearning, and Tristan attempted not simply to describe but to be the thing it describes, and in doing so drove musical language to the brink of dissolution, as well as pushing the orchestra to create worlds and sounds it had never dreamed possible.