If you like dramaturgical solutions to an opera hinted at rather than spelt out in capitals, this revival of Christof Loy’s 2012 Deutsche Oper production may please. The action is lightly moved into the 20th century, to around the time of the opera’s premiere, and the designs go easy on Czech rustic colour and mill-related props. The Buryja family are sufficiently bourgeois-ified to have expensively coiffed hair and classily tailored wardrobes. As we see the Kostelnička onstage from the beginning (NB Arthaus’s sleeve annotator, she’s not a man!), the bare white box standing set may represent the prison cell she’ll be sent to at the end – although nothing else backs up that suggestion. But, as Jennifer Larmore looks the very opposite of the bitter harridan we still often see, that hint of flashback and her continual presence point towards Kostelnička’s fear lest Jenůfa repeat her own loveless life story.

Other production hints are not quite made flesh either. Jenůfa pointedly observes the Kostelnička’s guilty reaction to the ‘icy wind’ entering her house at the end of Act 2 – does she sense already who killed her child? – and the black featureless terrain (death? no hope?) into which the newly married Jenůfa and Laca walk at the final curtain is certainly a contrast to the ‘Entry of the Gods into Valhalla’ volume and amplitude that Donald Runnicles is conjuring from his orchestra.

Both Larmore and Michaela Kaune’s older-looking than usual Jenůfa give full-voiced, fluent readings of their roles – as per normal now, Kostelnička gets her big Act 1 monologue – but the closeness in their ages (and the near attractiveness of Larmore’s appearance) is not necessarily helpful to this drama (or made sufficient use of by the production). Schwarz is also quite a glamorous granny and, as an actress of skill, is predictably used more than the role normally is – the production hints (again, hints) at her responsibility for getting Laca and Jenůfa together. The men are well sung and more conventionally represented, with Will Hartmann a solid, genuine Laca and Ladislav Elgr a baby-faced toyboy teva who goes completely to pieces when the child’s body is found.

Smaller roles are worked in some detail and Runnicles leads the work with Romantic panache and dynamics (and a touch of Russian operatic violence). The filming appears to present what there is to see without intrusion. Try to investigate before you buy. Surprisingly there’s not the expected competition in terms of numbers of small-screen Jenůfas – the old Glyndebourne set (ArtHaus) and the 2009 Madrid production by Stéphane Braunschweig (Opus Arte) are worthy of attention.