Nielsen’s second opera hasn’t always travelled well outside its native land. The ‘sung in German’ label on this newcomer rang alarm bells when considering the composer’s whole project to move Nordic music away from what he termed the ‘gravy and grease’ of culturally dominant Germany. Maskarade is an embodiment of that but you can trust modern Germany’s opera scene to know what sort of piece it’s dealing with and to address ‘lighter’ (straining inverted commas) works like this with the absolute severity of thought and depth of preparation they need.

So yes, don’t judge a DVD by its cover, because enshrined within is a joyous, resonant and highly accomplished performance from Frankfurt Opera of a treacherously difficult and chameleonic work, one that gets to the heart of its agenda and is ever diligent but never not fun. As for the German, it’s more than a translation, with something of the spirit and snap of the original Danish (if not the drunken vowels) and its tendency to veer from the philosopher’s armchair to the beer hall, knowing that genuine life lessons are more likely learned in the latter.

The staging has elements of the fashionable-again Greek theatre in which humans provide physical infrastructure. It clearly underlines the generation gap at the heart of Nielsen’s ever-young, ever-prescient and ever-relevant piece. On screen it’s a dark watching experience for a comic opera (though there’s abundant colour in the clothes), which might serve as a visual metaphor for the opera’s central point of a few nights of partying going some way to remedying 11 months of Copenhagen dinge. Like Kasper Holten’s fine staging on DVD from the Royal Danish Opera – one that perhaps emphasises the transition from old worlds to new a touch more subtly than this, but with grander voices and with more local relevance to Copenhagen – Kratzer’s leaves us with the lingering question of whether our true identities are those we indulge when loosened by alcohol and costumes, rather than those we adopt at home and in the office.

So what do we get? Vivid and absolutely text-led performances all round with a highly convincing and genuinely young/fashionable Leander and Leonora pairing (the warm and lyrical Michael Porter and the bright and agile Monika Buczkowska), with a very fine Henrik (Liviu Holender) and Arv (Samuel Levine) but a Jeronimus and Magdelone from Alfred Reiter and Susan Bullock who come close to stealing the show – down to their individual performances, yes, but also the clarity and comedy with which they are directed. Jeronimus appears more like a dull Frankfurt lawyer than a fusty old aristo – someone who absolutely would stop at the Groucho Marx spectacles and nose when required to dress up. Bullock, meanwhile, is a brilliantly puckish Minnie Mouse – a joy to watch.

That sort of authenticity from understatement and truth gives the production its emotional power. The quintet at the end of Act 1 needs a dramatic set piece and this one comes across almost as well as Holten’s Copenhagen conveyer-belt fun-house. Kratzer has the edge on Holten for the opera’s sprawling, disintegrating Act 3, at whose heart is a fantastic, embracing and unusually moving rendition of the Cockerel’s Dance with thrilling strobe lighting. Truly, we see a community shaking the tree to discover some collective idea of what health, happiness and togetherness means – Denmark’s grand project, still, and certainly Nielsen’s. It is wonderfully caught here.