This is just the sort of work for which a DVD issue is invaluable. One could travel the world and never find oneself in a city where the opera company was putting on Zandonai’s most famous work. Premiered in 1914, it has had distinguished stagings (including one at the New York Met in 1984 with Scotto and Domingo, which is also on DVD from DG), but few and far between.

The tragic story of Francesca, married off against her will to the brutal Giovanni “lo Sciancato” but all the time in love with his younger brother Paolo “il Bello”, is based on D’Annunzio’s play, itself taken from an episode in Dante’s Inferno. The title-role is a great challenge for the soprano - she is on stage for most of the evening. Daniela Dessì, understandably, begins slightly cautiously, but she rises splendidly to the great love duet at the end of Act 3, when the lovers read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, and find their own passion cannot be denied.

Act 4 has a scene in which Francesca is taunted by the third brother, the scathing Malatestino, who is having a prisoner tortured offstage (shades of Act 2 of Tosca). He eventually exits and returns with the unfortunate victim’s head, wrapped in a cloth. Ludovít Ludha is excellent in this part, as is Fabio Armiliato as Paolo. Alberto Mastromarino as Giovanni gets to hold the stage at the end: having murdered the lovers, he breaks his sword in half.

Massimo Gasparon’s production is satisfyingly old-fashioned, his costumes evoking 14th-century Italy – heaven knows how many metres of brocade and silk were used. The big scene in Act 2, in which a battle is raging around the castle and Francesca refuses to hide but watches from a tower, is a bit difficult to show on the small screen, but the “silent” duet at the end of Act 1, when Francesca sees Paolo for the first time and gives him a rose, is finely achieved. Zandonai’s orchestral effects are fascinating, and Maurizio Barbacini and the Marchigiana orchestra make the most of them. Coming almost at the end of the age of verismo, Francesca da Rimini seems like a summing-up of all the influences that had weighed on Italian opera, and were ultimately to destroy it. It is a fascinating work. I wouldn’t suggest that any cash-strapped opera house should consider it nowadays – all the more enjoyable then to encounter it on DVD.