Originally projected to be an Oedipus with libretto by Göran Gentele, György Ligeti’s 1974-77 commission for the Stockholm Royal Opera became a version of Michel de Ghelderode’s (deadly serious) 1934 farce La balade du Grand Macabre about the state of mankind – and, without a doubt, musically one of the great operas of the 20th century. It is not just the running thread of the synthetic Baroque love music of Amando and Amanda (originally, and better, named Clitoria and Spermando) that makes the score sound like a brilliantly wacky collision of Monteverdi and 1970s New York street music.

Performed here, as is now regular, in the composer’s substantial 1996 revision, this Barcelona production by the Catalan theatre collective La Fura dels Baus was seen at English National Opera in autumn 2009 and has also visited Brussels and Rome. For the sake of the work, I am glad it was a success – but it is revealing that it pleased conservative critics who then took out what spleen they had about the drama’s scatology and comedy on Ligeti and his co-librettist Michael Meschke rather than on Àlex Ollé and Valentina Carrasco’s reinventing-the-wheel style of production.

Because, frankly, all the subtlety, darkness and danger of the opera is swamped beneath La Fura’s now habitual parade of large statues, projections and relentless forestage street-theatre acrobatics. If the work had been staged in the 1950s there would have been a large standing set unrelated to what the actors did. Here there is a large standing fibreglass woman. The cast does actually climb in, over and out of it (using, of course, her more sexual parts) and the statue moves, but it has little to do with the drama of the piece or the production.

An international cast, chosen with the Liceu’s normal skill, sing well and act to perfection the broad, superficial style that the directors require. Michael Boder and his orchestra seem to have the piece well sorted out. But there’s too little feel in the production of an ensemble working together or of serious character investigation. A disappointment.