The Metropolitan Opera’s production of Gaetano Donizetti’s bel canto classic Lucia di Lammermoor, seen in high-definition broadcast at the St. Louis Art Museum on Saturday afternoon, offered a made-for-HD quartet of lead singers, a handsome, mostly well-thought-out production, and an impressive replacement leading man in tenor Piotr Beczala.

Beczala, subbing for an ailing Rolando Villazon, has a big, beautiful voice to go with height and good looks. Along with soprano Anna Netrebko in the title role, baritone Mariusz Kwiecien as her rotten brother Enrico and bass Ildar Abdrazakov as the duplicitous cleric Raimondo, he formed part of a Slavic powerhouse.

The story is based on Sir Walter Scott’s tragedy The Bride of Lammermoor, and it doesn’t stint on melodrama. With its mix of passion, madness, murder and suicide, SLAM’s Bill Appleton noted in his introduction, “the Congressional hearings have nothing on this opera.”

The afternoon’s host was petite French diva Natalie Dessay, an acclaimed Lucia herself; she seemed to be having a thoroughly good time, peering wide-eyed into the camera’s lens and proclaiming the heroine to be “another victim of man and circumstance.”

The opera should have belonged outright to the charismatic Netrebko, but she seemed to be a bit off her game; she gave a good performance, not a great one. She developed the character well enough, although this was a Lucy whose plunge into madness was more abrupt than most. Her singing lacked some of its usual excitement. (And the beautiful Netrebko is still carrying a touch of post-partum puffiness after giving birth last summer.)

Kwiecien has a terrific voice, a rich dark baritone of a kind rarely heard, and he smolders handsomely onstage. Like the others, Abdrazakov is good-looking, with a fine voice; he seemed a little young for Raimondo.

Tenor Colin Lee played the doomed Arturo as a smooth politician; it worked well. Michaela Martens was sympathetic as Alisa, Lucia’s faithful mezzo sidekick. Michael Myers’s henchman-gamekeeper Normanno barked a lot, approximating the notes in the score.

The men’s chorus got off to a scrappy start; things improved on the choral front from there, but chorusmaster Donald Palumbo’s work there is not yet finished. Conductor Marco Armiliato and the orchestra did a fine job with the score. There was lovely solo playing from harpist Mariko Anraku and flutist Stefan Ragnar Hoskuldsson, and, on the spooky-sounding armonica, from Cecilia Brauer.

Mary Zimmerman’s production updates the action to the late 19th century, which makes some parts of the storyline (like who’s going to take the throne of Scotland and what that will mean for Enrico) historically problematic: Aren’t Victoria and the family on holiday just up the road at Balmoral Castle?

Mara Blumenfeld’s costumes were all handsome, though; the blood on Lucy’s wedding dress was artistically done (I particularly like the blood-soaked hem), although it stopped short in the makeup department. Daniel Ostling’s sets, dimly lit by T.J. Gerckens, were outstanding, particularly the staircase in the Mad Scene.

Zimmerman’s direction was mostly thoughtful and dramatically sound. There were a few moments that didn’t add up — would Lucia really splash Alisa in leather gloves, and do so when it was chilly enough for her to be toting a muff? — and then there were the distressingly corporeal ghosts.

The first was at the haunted fountain. It wasn’t enough for Lucia to describe seeing her; this ghost-on-demand appeared on cue. (She was handsy, too.) The second was the just-deceased Lucy herself, appearing to her beloved almost at the moment of her death. It was all a bit much.

(There could be a small comic opera made from the backstage intermission features, along the lines of Mozart’s The Impresario: The diva hostess, who’s famous for singing the same role as the soprano she’s interviewing, flourishing her written notes and reading from the teleprompter; the tenor and baritone saying hi to the folks back home in Poland; the interview with the technical guys; and an interview with the director, dressed, in the middle of the afternoon, in what appears to be a black negligee.)