Here is the second recording within six months of Plácido Domingo in the title-role of Simon Boccanegra, his first onstage operatic baritone role. The Metropolitan Opera’s DVD is everything one would expect of it. In Giancarlo del Monaco’s unrepentantly traditional production, that means we get Verdi’s opera as grand costume drama, its sets including a rambling Grimaldi country estate and a palatial Council Chamber in the Doge’s Palace. Those with an aversion to the old-fashioned picturesque might find it fusty but it is handsomely executed and beautifully filmed.

It takes an artist of rare stature to measure up against a staging as big as this. Happily, Domingo is just that. He brings gravitas to the heart-rending recognition scene with his daughter and bestrides the Council Chamber with conviction. It is just a shame that he is not in his best voice. There are intermittent signs of vocal infirmity and it is ironic that, as a tenor, he should find a baritone’s Fs and Gs on the high side. James Morris starts in wobbly form as Fiesco and still sounds gruff at the end. A troublesome vibrato aside, Adrianne Pieczonka’s soprano is nicely lyric and warm but has a hearty quality that is difficult to square with the vulnerable Amelia. Marcello Giordani as Gabriele Adorno sounds worn. It is left to Levine and the splendid orchestra to give the music its opulence.

Visually, this luxurious production trumps the competition. In all other respects the Royal Opera DVD, with Domingo in better voice, is preferable. Poplavskaya and Calleja make a fresh-voiced pair of lovers and Pappano is also the more animated of the conductors. Lucky the purchaser who has a choice of the two.