There are many memorable fat knights in the Falstaff discography, so it’s all the more splendid to have another Sir John join their company – and one conducted by another Sir John – Eliot Gardiner – at that.

Caught in full codpiece-sporting splendour on DVD/Blu-ray, Nicola Alaimo’s Falstaff is a disgraceful and slightly gross chancer but he’s also a Falstaff who remembers an age of chivalry, and through Alaimo’s wonderful diction and warmth of expression we see a bounder with charisma and even romantic charm. And, not looking at anyone in particular (cough, Sir Bryn), it’s nice to hear a true baritone sail easily up to a top G at the end of the Act 1 ‘Honour’ monologue.

Recorded in Florence at the end of 2021, this is a happy show, even if it tells us not very much new about Verdi’s swansong, and, as so often in filmed opera from Italy, the video direction (Tiziano Mancini) is perfunctory. That makes it rather difficult to see the full extent of Julian Crouch’s versatile sets, which feature animated backdrops of the Thames complete with bobbing boats.

Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s efficient production probably had more atmosphere in the theatre. This stylised version of Tudor England does have occasional bottom-scratching and crotch-grabbing but overall its humour is mild, and there are no surprises in the set pieces. A ‘freeze frame’ effect to spotlight the travails of young lovers Nannetta (Francesca Boncompagni) and Fenton (Matthew Swensen) is a neat if old-fashioned effect, while the lovely costumes (Kevin Pollard) for the ‘ghosts’ of the final scene appropriately suggest Elizabethan masque.

Gardiner recorded Falstaff in 1998 with his own period orchestra (Philips, 4/01), coming in for both praise and stiff criticism. I share Alan Blyth’s opinion 20 years on as Gardiner now teams up with the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale. The conductor is superb at teasing out acute details – the jingle of gold when Ford presses money upon Falstaff or the stirring accompaniment to the young lovers in their Act 3 nocturnal duet. At other times his emphatic style of interpretation can be too deliberate, and, seemingly so enraptured in the material, he lets both of Falstaff’s humiliations unfold far too slowly, sapping them of theatrical brio.

Alaimo is flanked mostly by strong support, with Ailyn Pérez everything you’d want from a winsome, lyrical Alice Ford and Caterina Piva a notably strong Meg. Boncompagni’s bright, fluty sound is in lovely contrast to the elder ‘wives’. Swensen is a perfectly fine Fenton but Simone Piazzola’s rather brutish Ford is a let-down. Two long-serving Gardiner accomplices show their mettle: Gianluca Buratto, luxury casting as Pistol, and Sara Mingardo, who sang Quickly for the conductor on his 2001 recording and now returns to the part with brilliant wit.