‘Girls seem either to want to marry me or kill me.’ Such is the lament of the beleaguered groom Vašek in Act 3 of The Bartered Bride, and the moment is emblematic of this recording’s strength and, more considerably, its weakness. As delivered by Aleš Voráček, you hear exactly what Smetana put on the page, though with a disappointing absence of exclamation or humour. That overall tone is set by Jiří Bělohlávek, who has something of Wolfgang Sawallisch’s temperament: intelligent, alert but observing the music from an objective mid-distance. As perfect as he is for Martinů’s high-traffic symphonies, he’s at odds with this opera’s folksy tale of a girl choosing between a secure marriage and loving one.

When the work’s level of inspiration rises, so does Bělohlávek’s. In Mařenka’s great Act 3 aria, Bělohlávek’s treatment of lower strings conveys Mařenka’s gut-wrenching dilemma and goes on to enhance her characterisation every step of the way. He’s also awake for the opera’s big set pieces. But even chestnuts such as the famous Overture lack that extra edge of vitality often heard elsewhere. And that’s hardly the worst of it.

Tutti passages leading into arias or ensembles should make you eager to hear what comes next. Not always here. The early-in-Act 1 recitatives with Mařenka and Jeník (the man she truly loves) feel appropriately intimate, though their lower-key temperature makes the music seem pedestrian. The echoes of Rossini buffa characters are sensed more distantly than usual in Jozef Benci’s characterisation of the marriage broker Kecal. And though one hardly expects Voráček to follow the lead of Jon Vickers, you can hope for something more emphatic.

Maybe an anti-grand-opera approach could work with a Czech opera company that can readily translate the piece’s essence into an alternative performance manner. But the BBC orchestra and chorus seem not to have a deep enough institutional memory with this music. Aside from Dana Burešová, who comes to the role of Mařenka as a Smetana specialist whose every phrase has a ring of truth, much of the rest of this restrained cast comes off as second-string voices – tenor Tomáš Juhás’s high notes are there but are less than thrilling – particularly alongside the charismatic cast headed by Gabriela Beňačková and Peter Dvorsky conducted by Zdeněk Košler – a seriously operatic recording.