The Metropolitan Opera’s Franco Zeffirelli production of Turandothas nearly achieved tourist-attraction status in New York since first leaving the public alternately dazzled by its lavishness and appalled by its vulgarity in 1987, so it’s not surprising that this 2009 performance isn’t its first appearance on home video. Certainly, the HD technology warrants a second look at the production’s brain-flooding panorama of ancient China that matches the sumptuousness of Puccini’s score (curiously written with his least-dimensional characters). At the very least, Zeffirelli’s visual stimulation deflects questions about the fairy-tale plot: we take it on faith that Princess Turandot must behead her suitors, that a glimpse of her inspires Prince Calaf to risk everything and that a smile from him was enough for the slave girl Liù to lay down her life for him.

Telecast director Gary Halvorson has made the kind of choices that give the production integrity: Act 1 is darker than here than on the Met stage. And though Turandot’s court in Act 2 glitters so brightly that I once recommended sunglasses, the palette on this DVD is beige and muted gold. The Act 3 exchanges between Turandot and Calaf are captured with telling intimacy that binds the Franco Alfano ending more seamlessly to the rest of the opera.

The cast might be described as a B‑team that often rises to A‑team status. Maria Guleghina and Marcello Giordani, two of the Met’s more dependable regulars, won’t make anyone forget the legendary partnerships in these roles from Nilsson/Corelli onwards. But they’re the best that was available in 2009, both of them fairly new to their roles and singing them with a sense of new discovery. Both have ungraceful habits – Guleghina can resort to shouting and Giordani sometimes bullies his way through everything in chest voice. But they’re on good behaviour here. One of the more interesting touches from the revival’s stage director David Kneuss: both Turandot and Calaf walk into the riddle scene confident that they’re going to win.

In the secondary roles, Marina Poplavskaya and Samuel Ramey are certainly A‑team talents, Poplavskaya floating high notes beautifully and getting lots of theatrical mileage out of her strong jaw line, while the veteran Ramey is in far better voice than I’ve heard him in recent years. Turandot is certainly a conductor’s opera and Andris Nelsons finds layers of sound and meaning unlike anything I’ve heard since Karajan’s audio recording on DG.