Perched on a tangerine rose, head fairy Ada wears mint-condition, crocheted wings while those of humbler members of the sorority look as though they have been dragged through a briar patch.

Raising the roof: Christiane Libor (front) as Ada

Meanwhile, Ada’s estranged husband Arindal cradles a Barbie doll to console himself. This is Emilio Sagi’s candyfloss take on Wagner’s first completed opera Die Feen (The Fairies).

Wagner was only 20 but the thematic blueprint for his later works was taking shape: supernatural elements and devastating curses. What initially seems like a laughable construction, especially with those wings, is partially redeemed by these anticipations. And the score is equally rich in pointers to more mature works, Lohengrin in particular. in spite of the occasional tunnel of Mendelssohnian rhetoric, even post-adolescent Wagner beats so many established composers of the time.

Sagi’s joyously kitsch cabaret of tableaux vivants, the first ever staging in France, culled a few jeers at curtain call but it is hard to imagine any cutting-edge director begging for the job in spite of the opera’s fertile symbolism. And this camp extravaganza is actually so static and harmless that we focus on the music.

And there’s the rub. Marc Minkowski can argue till the cows come home about stripping Wagner of late 19th-century accretions but it won’t wash as long as his conducting comes in bite-sized chunks of inspiration and his period instrument orchestra remains so accident-prone.

The Châtelet’s director, Jean-Luc Choplin, wanted “young singers for a young composer’s work”. (On that basis, would he cast octogenarians in Verdi’s Falstaff?) The revelation and reward is Christiane Libor’s roof-raising Ada, a dramatic soprano with the goods. Lina Tetruashvili rattles off Lora’s coloratura and Salomé Haller is a stylish Farzana, one of Ada’s two-timing sisters.

The men, however, are generally shoddy. William Joyner’s Arindal treads a long via dolorosa but why is his good, light tenor being sacrificed in this voice-breaking role? Laurent Alvaro’s Morald shouts and Laurent Naouri (Gernot) fails to mask his now threadbare baritone with spirited comic acting. I recommend less money on the pink fluo tulle next time and more on beefy male voices. ★★☆☆☆

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