Companies releasing DVDs of Britten’s operas must be glad they do not have to look over their shoulders at the composer’s own recordings, as they do with his historic audio sets. It is a shame, though, that nobody took the initiative to film any of his operas with their original casts and productions (Owen Wingrave, conceived for television, is a special case).

This Billy Budd from the Teatro Real in Madrid offers a stripped-down, predominantly abstract view of the opera. The stage looks panoramic here, opening up vistas as wide as the ‘endless sea’. A tangle of rigging is the only permanent feature, suggesting a symbolic prison formed of chains of rope. On this empty expanse the intimate scenes cannot help but work less well and Deborah Warner, the director, has created a few logistical problems for herself. The originality of Britten’s coup de théâtre when Captain Vere goes to tell Billy Budd the court’s verdict is lost when Billy is visible on stage throughout, leaving the two of them to gaze at each other with meaningful looks as the mighty series of tonic chords plays out.

The strength of the production is its universality. The time and place are barely pinned down, despite costumes that are present-day, and there is no attempt to plump for one of the opera’s possible interpretations, such as a Christian allegory, over any of the others. Incidentally, what a wonderfully many-layered libretto Forster and Crozier delivered to Britten (a shame that the former is listed as ‘Foster’ by the on-screen credits).

The acting works so well in close-up that it is possible to follow this performance almost like a film. Jacques Imbrailo heads the cast in the title-role, as he did for the Glyndebourne DVD (Opus Arte, 9/11), and his warm, unforced singing is a major asset. Toby Spence looks too boyish for Captain Vere (when he says ‘I have studied men and their ways’, we do not quite believe him), but he sings the text with such clarity that we start to see the opera through his eyes. There is something very ordinary, in a good sense, about Brindley Sherratt’s man next-door Claggart until, left alone to expound on his motivation, he erupts in a powerful outpouring of repressed desire and self loathing.

There are some good individual turns among the supporting cast, notably Clive Bayley’s Dansker and Duncan Rock’s Donald. The ungrateful roles of the officers’ trio are decently taken by Thomas Oliemans, David Soar and Torben Jürgens. Ivor Bolton is the skilful conductor, keeping the drama taut, if without the pressure-cooker intensity achieved, with some help from the close studio balance, by Charles Mackerras on Decca’s DVD of the still gripping 1966 black-and-white BBC television film (9/08). The Madrid chorus does itself proud, laying bare how brutal daily life on board ship is with no sign of respite on the horizon. The final scene of this Billy Budd, grandly staged, sturdily sung, is as powerful as it gets.