Opera houses are on a hiding to nothing when staging Verdi’s Aida. Audiences crave the sort of spectacle usually reserved for arena opera, with a cast of thousands. The Metropolitan Opera’s lavish production is a notable exception…as was La Scala’s 2006 staging by Franco Zeffirelli. The Italian director was less than impressed when his production was sold off to Kazakhstan, to be replaced by this new version from Peter Stein.

Stein’s Aida is almost deliberately anti Zeffirellian, eschewing pomp. Ferdinand Wögerbauer’s simplistic black box set features cutaway geometric shapes to represent temple and tomb, a golden disc descending into the Temple of Vulcan and a golden backcloth for the Triumphal Scene. Nanà Cecchi’s costumes are Ancient Egypt-meets-Star Trek, with priests in sci-fi skullcaps. Given the veiled priestesses’ aimless twirling and the gyrating children costumed as Ethiopian slaves in Amneris’s chamber, it’s probably a good job the main ballet in the Triumphal Scene is excised. The production looks cheap and provincial, which is not what you expect from Italy’s leading opera house.

But Aida is about much more than sheer spectacle, and this is where Stein succeeds, focusing effectively on the private moments. He is helped by Zubin Mehta’s sensitive conducting and Kristin Lewis as a believable Aida, beautifully acting the vulnerable slave. Vocally, she is less than ideal. Her creamy, Freni-like timbre is most attractive but the middle of her voice lacks weight – more lyric rather than spinto soprano – and she becomes strained at the top.

Her Radamès, Fabio Sartori, is less believable as her warrior, his stolid stage presence matching his unexciting vocal performance. ‘Celeste Aida’ is sung without any great poetry. George Gagnidze has the vocal heft for Amonasro but no true sense of Verdian line, and Matti Salminen is woefully underpowered as Ramfis, completely lacking menace as the zealous priest.

The class act here is Anita Rachvelishvili’s waspish Amneris, in terrific voice throughout, but especially in the Judgement Scene. In the opera’s final moments, Amneris slashes her wrists, blood dripping over the tomb entrance. It makes for a moving ending to an underwhelming evening.