If any of Milan's socialites were put off by the prospect of five hours of Wagner on the opening night of the La Scala season, you couldn't tell: the throng of paparazzi outside the theatre were heaving. Besides, in artistic terms, this was a very glamorous evening indeed, with Daniel Barenboim conducting Patrice Chéreau's first Wagner production since his famous 1976 Bayreuth Ring cycle.

Since then, concept productions of Tristan have become so much the norm that Chéreau's naturalism comes almost as a shock. Richard Peduzzi provides an industrial-era set of tall, wharf-like brick walls; the king's bride-to-be arrives on a barge, like any other cargo. The characters, drably costumed by Moidele Bickel, are very much real people, and none more so than Waltraud Meier's magnetic Isolde, radiant-sounding except at the very top. The love potion is less a lightning bolt, more an excuse for she and Tristan to reveal their feelings. It's an honest production that only falters when it brings an unwanted sense of domesticity to the love duet.

And what of Ian Storey, the British tenor barely known in the UK, catapulted into the cast a few months ago to sing his first Tristan? His is a beefy but easy voice, like a baritone that goes up and up. At first, he sounds overwhelmed, but that is a problem for almost all of a strong cast: Barenboim makes this colossus of a score sound urgently beautiful, but he does not often rein in his players. Yet Storey reveals a stamina that serves him well in Tristan's third-act ravings, and his sincerity - he has an easy, ordinary-blokish presence - is touching. Not an all-out triumph, perhaps, but certainly quite some arrival.

· Until January 2. Details: 0039 2 72 003 744. teatroallascala.org