Knocking Bellini’s sleepwalking girl of 1831 still seems de rigueur. The Metropolitan Opera broadcast of 2009 with Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez (now a Decca DVD) had scarcely begun before the ‘star’ presenter rubbished the libretto, while our own John Steane, in his review of the same, called the opera ‘an irredeemably vacuous entertainment, both dramatically and musically’.

But listen (and look) up: all Bellini’s operas are about the trauma of relationships breaking down and – here, and in I Puritani – being remade. In Sonnambula he carries this life theme into a more comic context. It’s a sophisticated, minimalist entertainment which can take a place alongside Mozart (Così fan tutte), Wagner (Der fliegende Holländer) or Weber (Der Freischütz) in bringing the newest scientific discoveries onstage to look at love from a psychological viewpoint. The present performance, recorded two years ago, is strong musically and more complete textually than it would have been in days of yore (Callas and Tullio Serafin). The sub-plot of secunda donna Lisa’s attempt to compromise heroine Amina gets a fuller run for its money with her attempts to return to a relationship with Elvino.

The cast has been carefully assembled. English-born, Australian-bred Jessica Pratt vocalises the put-upon heroine with skill and beauty. Occasionally she is too reserved to let go and thrill listeners with that manic slancio that Callas and Bartoli (in different ways) find on their records. Georgian tenor Shalva Mukeria, unflatteringly made up and costumed, clearly knows his way well round Elvino’s far from easy notes, and sounds suitably Romantic. Giovanni Battista Parodi – the Freud avant la lettre of this drama – is wholly convincing in voice and action. Gabriele Ferro, an experienced and classy conductor of this repertoire, is on terrific form, as is his orchestra. It’s not rip-rip fast – as can be today’s ‘historically informed’ readings – but this maestro knows how to be slow and moving in this music without dragging.

The production is gently updated 100 years to the 1930s and set in a mountain ski resort with attractive Alpine panorama. All this is fine – the important physical geography of Amina’s sleepwalking peril is preserved, as is the atmosphere of a community in isolation. Whereas the also modernised Met performance-as-rehearsal show is trying (too hard) to make us laugh every second, Morassi’s direction has the advantage of taking the piece seriously. When Elvino realises that Lisa too (as he thinks) has been a deceiver, his ‘Is there no love any more in the world?’ is genuinely heartbreaking.