First presented in Munich and Cardiff 15 years ago, the David Alden/Paul Steinberg/Buki Schiff Poppea is seen here in a punchy 2009 performance of distinctively dark musical colouring from Barcelona. The staging remains a masterclass in simplicity and style, comprehensively embracing the diverse moods (or humours) that make up the work. While there is no lack of spatial grandeur when needed, Steinberg’s sets – little more than walls, revolving doors and pictures of Nero – are all direct agents of the drama. And Schiff’s costumes use 20th-century movie star and fashion references (see especially Ruth Rosique’s Drusilla) to illuminate character rather than provide irrelevant modern parallels.

At the beginning, Alden’s soldiers-on-watch scene (with the versatile Guy de Mey) would not be out of place as one of Morecambe and Wise’s play sketches. Then, in the first duet between Sarah Connolly’s neurotic, frightening Nero and Miah Persson’s scheming heroine, he has the would-be lovers eyeing each other up, rather than getting too close, at each end of a grand ceremonial couch. Will they give each other what they want? Can this Nero actually cope with illegal divorce and effective murder (of Seneca)? Tension is maintained throughout because the central issue of the opera’s title is never resolved until that sublime final duet that Monteverdi didn’t write.

The more straightforwardly comic scenes go well also. Nothing is overly camped up – even Dominique Visse in loud, bra-flashing drag as Ottavia’s Nurse – and the Valletto/Damigella duet ends wittily with them being caught up as eavesdroppers to the Nero/Lucan celebration scene.

The whole is acutely paced and supported by Harry Bicket’s orchestra, their performance a reminder of how much progress has been made in the realisation of early Venetian opera in the last half-century. The hand-picked European cast is in fine fettle, Connolly’s Nero outstanding; picture and sound appear to serve the production. This is, of course, not the only way to do Poppea but even the strongest DVD rivals to this set (Haïm/Carsen on Decca and Christie/Pizzi on Virgin) seem a little over-egged in comparison.