This has taken a few years to hit the shelves. Arnaud Bernard’s staging of I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Bellini’s not-so-Shakespearean take on Romeo and Juliet, opened at the Teatro La Fenice – the house where the opera premiered in 1830 – way back in January 2015. It looks handsome and the singers range from reliable to very good, so I wonder at the delay.

Bernard essentially gives us a period production but with a very slight twist. We appear to be in an art gallery or grand palace where workmen are busy, welding metal and transporting wrapped-up paintings and tapestries. Several scenes open with members of the traditionally costumed chorus in freeze-frame poses in the style of the Old Masters, before springing to life. The closing tableau – the Capulets and Montagues discovering the dead lovers amid accusatory finger-pointing – is then, literally, framed in gold as the curtain falls. Other than rooting the production in Renaissance art, it doesn’t really do anything, but then it does no harm either. No controversy, no scandal, just a straight telling of the tale.

It’s not an opera full of hit tunes – the best-known aria is Giulietta’s ‘Oh quante volte’ in Act 1 – but it has a dedicated following and is staged relatively frequently. As in any Romeo and Juliet opera, it needs two outstanding leads and La Fenice fields two of Italy’s finest in Sonia Ganassi and Jessica Pratt (the latter is a British-born Australian soprano but has spent so much of her career based in Italy that she could be granted Italian citizenship). Ganassi has a soft-grained mezzo and sings the role of Romeo with excellent bel canto style, even if she doesn’t really convince as a young male lover. Pratt is a fine Giulietta. There are few of the vocal fireworks for which she is most famous – a soprano in the Joan Sutherland mould – but her phrasing is sensitive and her pianissimos are delicious, especially in ‘Oh quante volte’. In true bel canto style, Bellini allows Giulietta to awaken from feigned death just in time for her to sing a final duet with Romeo, who – alas – has just downed a bottle of poison. Here, Ganassi and Pratt are most moving.

Shalva Mukeria’s reedy tenor does not especially ingratiate as Tebaldo but Rubén Amoretti makes for a fierce Capellio and Luca Dall’Amico’s solid bass lends gravitas to Lorenzo. Omer Meir Wellber conducts a sympathetic account of the score, well played by La Fenice’s orchestra. If you’re looking for a safe, traditional Capuleti, this could very well fit the bill.