The premiere of Madama Butterfly at La Scala, Milan, in 1904 was famously one of operatic history’s great flops. So great, meanwhile, was the runaway success of the revised version Puccini swiftly produced for a performance in Brescia just a few months later that any desire to restage the original has usually been seen as eccentric, unnecessary, or both.

Not so with Riccardo Chailly. And the conductor clearly knows his onions when it comes to Butterflies, weighing up the different versions in a booklet interview before concluding that the original version is the best. And that’s what he conducts – fabulously – here in Alvis Hermanis’s stylish, traditional production, which opened La Scala’s 2016 17 season.

In comes lots of additional background material in Act 1, while the rest of the opera makes up just one long Act 2. Out goes Pinkerton’s ‘Addio, fiorito asil’, along with any final sympathy you might have felt for him (here with the Christian names ‘Francis Blummy’ rather than ‘Benjamin Franklin’). We get more of his American wife, as well as several moments where we veer off from the familiar into the unknown. But one comes away, if not feeling that this version is better than those we normally see, then certainly not finding it any worse – and somewhat baffled as to how it could have flopped so catastrophically (that failure was in fact as much to do with politics and business as art).

It’s hard to imagine, though, that the orchestral playing or conducting that night came close to what Chailly achieves here with his Milan band, beautifully paced and tender, with the sheer invention and quality of the music shining reliably through. It’s carefully controlled, too, so that we never risk toppling over into excess. He’s assembled a fine cast, too. Maria José Siri doesn’t gain much from the heavy geisha make-up and wispy hand gestures that are imposed upon her, and her girlish routine in Act 1 never feels natural, but she’s a fine artist in the grand tradition and sings powerfully and movingly in the evening’s second half, especially in the extended final scene.

Bryan Hymel’s Pinkerton is sung brightly and breezily, and well acted: likeable, no doubt, but cursed with a careless, unthinking entitlement that suddenly feels especially relevant. Carlos Álvarez is a kindly, warm Sharpless, Annalisa Stroppa an attentive Suzuki, although her abstract emoting won’t be to all tastes. Nor, arguably, will be the unreflective japonaiserie of the staging. Nevertheless, it’s certainly a handsome show, with plenty of cherry blossom and pretty images projected on a paper screen. Above all it makes a powerful, persuasive case for Puccini’s first thoughts on his great tearjerker.