There’s not much joy in this opera, and perhaps the producer who makes it his business to rub the fact in as hard as he can would argue that he is only being true to its artistic nature and the composer’s intentions. It doesn’t mean we’re going to thank him for it, and I’m not sure that Verdi would either. He wrote it, after all, for the Paris Opéra, where they expected something worth looking at. They also had plenty of money to throw at it, whereas the production at Busseto gives the impression that they had to work within a tight budget and could afford no more than one small piece of token scenery for each act. Lighting seems to be rationed also, and costumes might have been brought out of stock (some of them at least) for Wozzeck.

This is not, then, notably a DVD for viewing. Musically it goes well. Under Stefano Ranzani, the orchestra plays in a manner worthy of its illustrious name, and the principal singers cope very creditably with some particularly challenging roles. In the thick of it is the tenor, Renzo Zulian, not ingratiating of tone but accurate and true in pitch, and apparently inexhaustible. The heroine, with the pretty name of Amarilli Nizza, is a conscientious artist. The Montforte and Procida are genuinely distinguished, the first (Vladimir Stoyanov) a Verdi baritone rather after the manner of Vladimir Chernov, the second (Orlin Anastassov) sonorous, firm and an impressive figure onstage. The chorus is kept busy moving to and fro in the outer spaces of the theatre stalls. This involves some interestingly antiphonal acoustic effects. The soloists move out along a kind of peripheral catwalk, with the odd result that the camera shows us the soprano or the tenor singing in deep distress impassively observed by a bespectacled member of the public whose seat in a box behind the singer puts him in the frame.