What a joyous night has been captured here – a dual harvest of first fruit and vintage wine. Nadine Sierra made her (belated) Covent Garden debut in this 2023 revival of Donizetti’s most popular comedy. The soprano would go on that season to triumph in Donizetti’s most popular tragedy, Lucia di Lammermoor, and she is irresistible here as a lovelorn, skittish heroine, but one with depth, too.

Indeed, coming to this performance again on DVD/Blu ray (I caught the show live in the house) and now with the help of camera close-ups, I love the way in which Sierra undercuts the pratfalls with real pathos – worthy of poor Lucia herself – that make her Adina so memorable. Even in her early skirmishes with Liparit Avetisyan’s Nemorino there are phrases and facial expressions that betray the character’s insecurity and loneliness.

In a short DVD backstage extra, Sierra describes Adina as ‘representing modern woman’, and this vulnerable, headstrong character is someone you would want to sit down and chat with over a glass of Gavi, if you could stop her posting Instagram reels. Purely vocally, Sierra is in luscious form, culminating in the delectable ‘Quanto amore’ duet with Dr Dulcamara – a pivotal moment that the soprano truly treats as such – and the aria ‘Prendi, per me sei libero’, which at last unpeels the real Adina with affecting, painful sincerity.

And the older vines? Bryn Terfel has been evolving in the past decade into more of a character bass than the Helden-bass-baritone of old, albeit one with increasingly gnarly low notes. Nevertheless he returns to the role of Dulcamara with a gusto that’s hard to begrudge – a ‘doctor’ with the hygiene standards of Worzel Gummidge and the presentational skills of Barry Humphries’s Sir Les Patterson. But the quack isn’t over-mugged at the expense of Sierra’s Adina, nor of Avetisyan’s strong Nemorino, equally strongly acted and sung with sweet, sometimes slightly narrow tone – yet rising to a delicately imploring ‘Una furtiva lagrima’, introduced by the excellent Royal Opera bassoonist. I prefer Belcore to be a more plausible suitor for Adina’s hand than a bumptious toy soldier, but Boris Pinkhasovich does a perfectly good job here.

Laurent Pelly’s much-revived production, a romp in the haystacks (sets by Chantal Thomas) with various motorised vehicles passing back and forth (and a comedy dog, less effective on screen than in the theatre) still looks fresh, though the chorus choreography could be less frantic. More expressive contours come from Sesto Quatrini’s sensitive, spry conducting, another house debutant and one sure to receive a repeat invitation.