In the theatre Donizetti’s well-sprung comedy usually seems to work like clockwork, so it is surprising there is no obvious first choice on DVD. Glyndebourne’s production started life with its touring company, which explains the rather basic sets on a stage revolve. Nevertheless, Mariame Clément turns this to her advantage with a straightforward production that eschews visual gags and focuses on the characters. The opera is taken back in time to the late 18th century, crucible of the Enlightenment, when women started to explore emancipation (shades of Così fan tutte), and there is a definite English flavour, so that the final scene takes us to an afternoon tea party with the chorus sheltering under white umbrellas.

Any recording with Alessandro Corbelli in the title-role has to be worth investigating and his playing of the old curmudgeon, at once grumpy and delightfully vulnerable, is Italian comic opera at its most sophisticated. At Glyndebourne, he met his match in the charismatic Norina of Danielle de Niese. Flighty, quick-witted, always with some new expression flashing across her face, de Niese creates a brilliant characterisation, though her voice takes on a tinny, rather shrill edge as it goes higher. Ernesto, well sung by Alek Shrader, is played as a teenage brat, holed up in his bedroom with a rocking horse and two teddy bears. Nikolay Borchev’s Dr Malatesta is youthful, charming, not quite Italianate in sound. For some reason the chorus scenes are played out by a white-faced, bewigged party of aristocratic observers who sit stock still even when the music is bustling; but Enrique Mazzola gets playing of vitality out of the LPO in compensation.

As long as the plain, 18th-century settings do not seem a disappointment, this makes a recommendable DVD Don Pasquale. Alternatives include the Metropolitan Opera’s lavish, over-the-top recent production and Muti’s La Scala recording, also starring Corbelli and inimitably Italian.