This performance, from La Scala’s 1987 opening production, was almost the first operatic DVD ever to appear – in America only, so it’s good to see it in Britain at last and at mid-price. It immediately demonstrated the new format’s superiority over videotape, both in fitting this longish opera onto a single disc, and by making it visible again. Director Giorgio Strehler has a habit of showing his characters half-silhouetted against glowing skies. In the UK video the upper half of the stage picture was radiant, while all below was darkness and gnashing of teeth, the protagonists reduced to mere silhouettes. On this DVD mastering, apparently the same as the US release, the shadows clear to reveal an attractive-looking production, very traditional but lively and detailed in cloak-swirling commedia dell’arte style, in Mozart-era costume and massive neo-Classical sets among which the peasant wedding looks a bit out of place.

Out of the old school, too, is Muti’s conducting, which, while reasonably brisk and dramatically effective, comes nowhere near the authentic, with Romantic rubato and the full weight and meaty string tones of the modern orchestra. As such, though it’s not my favourite reading, I very much enjoyed it – despite, as in many Italian videos, the constant flashes of the maestro himself spoiling the stage continuity.

The soloists are a qualified pleasure, never bad but sometimes less than ideal. We’re lucky to have Sir Thomas Allen’s Don, though a decade after his Glyndebourne triumph in the role. His acting is more youthful and psychotically magnetic than in James Conlon’s Cologne recording but he’s not in his best voice, and seems strained by the grace notes in ‘Finch’an dal vino’. Elsewhere he’s more honeyed, turning ‘La ci darem la mano’ into an unsettling mix of seduction and stalking.

Claudio Desderi’s bluff Leporello also sounds slightly less resonant than usual, but Franciso Araiza is an ardently Italianate Ottavio. Edita Gruberová tries hard to be Donna Anna, but she simply lacks the stinging force for both the music and the character. Despite being inexplicably got up as a frizzy-haired frump, Ann Murray is a much better Donna Elvira, imperious and touching. Still more affecting, early in her career, is Suzanne Mentzer’s sparkling but vulnerable Zerlina, convincing in her rapport with Natale de Carolis’s light-voiced, entirely un-oafish Masetto. Sergei Koptchak’s voice is large enough but too coarse-toned and unsteady for the Commendatore’s elegiac line, especially as he sings the Statue offstage, replaced by an immobile equestrian figure in an annoying strobe light. The chorus work a lot harder than they sometimes do at the Scala, to good effect.

All told, this staging is much richer than Michael Hampe’s worthy but rather drab incarnations for Karajan and Conlon. Conlon, however, offers crisp conducting and slightly better principals, including Allen in finer voice, even if the supporting roles are only adequate; and has a slightly clearer recording with a surround-sound option. All the same, at mid-price this is a very appealing alternative.