There has been a resurgence of interest in Siberia of late as this is the second DVD of Giordano’s 1903 opera to appear in just over a year. Filmed at last year’s Bregenz Festival, the newcomer, directed by Vasily Barkhatov and conducted by Valentin Uryupin, is somewhat different from its predecessor, the Roberto Andò/Gianandrea Noseda production from Florence in 2021. Like the latter, however, it is hampered by an overarching theatrical concept that blunts its impact.

The tone here is unquestionably darker, for while Andò relocates the opera to Rome’s Cinecittà studios, where a neo-realist Dr Zhivago-style costume drama is being filmed, Barkhatov frames it with the tale of an elderly émigré (Clarry Bartha) returning to Russia after the fall of Communism (video projections tell us we are in 1992) both to research her family history and to scatter her late brother’s ashes on the site of the prison camp where both were born. The opera’s narrative consequently consists of her discoveries as we watch past history enacted in period dress on sets depicting the post-Soviet present. The St Petersburg apartment where Omer Kobiljak’s Alexis has installed Ambur Braid’s Stephana as his mistress materialises in a grey, dilapidated building that looks like some now disused ministry, while the border post, where Braid voluntarily joins Alexander Mikhailov’s Vassili in exile, has become a federal archive piled high with files and documents. Where the camp once stood, meanwhile, we find a soulless housing estate surrounding a deserted children’s playground.

The opera itself, however, has been twisted to fit the concept, as in order to create Bartha’s previously non-existent character of the Old Woman, she is allocated vocal lines from elsewhere in the score, not only those of the now absent Girl, searching for her father among the prisoners, but also some of the music intended for the maid Nikona and indeed for Stephana herself. You can either cope with this or you can’t, but Stephana’s death scene is hopelessly weakened when some of her most moving lines are taken by someone else.

The performance has its strong points. Braid has a big, voluptuous voice and the intensity of her singing proves compelling, in both her fierily sensual declarations to Vassili and the scorn with which she rounds on Gleby, once her pimp, later her tormentor, played by Scott Hendricks with occasionally fraying tone, though he’s a fine actor who admirably captures the man’s repellent opportunism. I’d much rather have Mikhailov’s lyrical, ardent Vassili to Noseda’s Giorgi Sturua, who is apt to belt in places. Bartha acts touchingly, though the sound is metallic, her upper registers effortful, none of which makes the changes to the score persuasive. Uryupin is less subtle, more heart-on-sleeve than Noseda, which means passions run high in the climactic set pieces, though we lose some detail elsewhere. Playing and choral singing are superb. Noseda’s performance is ultimately preferable, though both DVDs, alas, are far from perfect.