The renowned collaborations between Zurich Opera and Nikolaus Harnoncourt in the 1970s and early ’80s were crucial milestones in projecting historically-aware performance away from historicism-for-its-own-sake, towards vitally-conceived productions for contemporary audiences. Il Ritorno enjoyed great success in 1977, in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s imaginative staging, in which Harnoncourt’s opulent instrumental palette lifted the hearts of many, though only the eyebrows of the purists. In this musical ‘revival’ (the production is entirely new with its simple, fresh, whitewashed, open space and modern mosaic floor), to celebrate 25 years of the swashbuckling original, Harnoncourt allows the nobility of the score to roll unimpeded by the driven intensity of the older recorded account on Teldec from 1971 (9/89R).

The vocal contributions are also more eloquent than ever with outstanding contributions from the two protagonists, Vesselina Kasarova and Dietrich Henschel; can Monteverdi have ever heard this, his first opera for Venice’s Teatro San Cassiano in 1640, sung with such an extraordinary range of vocal beauty and immediacy of expression? This extends to all the characters, notably in the wonderful discussion between the truculent Neptune and appeasing Jupiter, in Act 1, scene 4, where comedy and gravitas are superbly juxtaposed. Rudolf Schasching’s comic Iro is brilliantly characterised and Isabel Rey’s Minerva and Malin Hartelius’s Melanto are accomplished throughout. Martina Janková completes the trio of exceptional female minor roles with an exquisite ‘Procurero la pace’ near the end.

Of the two caveats here, the durability of Harnoncourt’s big-band score with its bold instrumental canvas is likely to be a source of debate. Monteverdi left only a shell of his musical genius and, as convention dictated, the performers filled in the rest. For the modern performer, the logic of using the greatest array of colouration to suit the context of characterisation and emotional states is highly plausible for all those who value music drama – and Monteverdi, more to the point – in pastels rather than charcoal. Yet, there are moments when the spirit of realisation enters into the realms of transcription, especially in the richly endowed brass ensembles used for divine intervention. A later Baroque soundworld occasionally prevails and the luminosity of the moment is lost, and yet, equally, the warm glow of assured fidelity in ‘Hor di parlar e tempo’ – where Ulysses’s accompagnato recitative (with arpeggiated harps) lends remarkable authenticity to the composer’s primal communicative instincts – is ravishing and persuasive. The DVD production is flawed only by some poor dubbing in Act 2.