Bringing opera to the masses by way of the silver screen may be a boon to audiences, especially in the hinterlands, but it has its deleterious side for opera companies already concerned about their bottom lines. Further exacerbating the situation, the Graham Vick production of the Puccini’s “La Rondine,” or “The Swallow,” from Teatro La Fenice in Venice was shown at Symphony Space on Sunday afternoon.

The great Viennese composers of his day loved Puccini. Gustav Mahler championed Puccini’s “La Bohème” over the one written by Leoncavallo. Arnold Schoenberg met with Puccini in Florence when the Austrian came to conduct a performance of his “Pierrot Lunaire.” And later Alban Berg, who always referred to the Italian as Signor Puccini, incorporated much of the coloristic pioneering of “Madama Butterfly” into the score of his own “Wozzeck.”

The musical language of “La Rondine” is quintessentially Viennese, although World War I dictated that the setting be transported to Paris. There is a certain sense of being pleasantly lost throughout. Of course, watching a movie is a very different experience from going to the opera, especially since sound engineers simply cannot help homogenizing all of the voices. To attempt to evaluate vocal power, projection, or dynamics is a fool’s errand. Vocal color, intonation, phrasing, and passion, however, are still on display.

This performance did have one aspect that recalled live opera, a last-minute cast change. Although the poster out front promised Massimo Giordano, the actual tenor was the less-well-known Fernando Portari. He was fine as Ruggero, a model of solid pitch and a competent actor with his voice. Fiorenza Cedolins was a superb Magda, exhibiting a strong bottom and a multifaceted repertoire of acting devices. Her voice is a bit heavy in spots, but this only reinforced the Teutonic nature of her role in the midst of an Italian opera. Her “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta” was wistful and seriously affecting.

Others in the cast were also notable, especially the Lisette of Sandra Pastrana and the Prunier of Emanuele Giannino. Less praise should be heaped upon the pit, where the conductor Carlo Rizzi did little to ramp up the emotional content or dramatic passages of his singers. Judging only from the instrumental music, this would have to be considered a flat, monochromatic effort.

Sometimes, cinematic technique clouded the telling of the tale. The club scene has an awful lot going on and so the director chose to jump-cut from one spot on the stage to another, rather than pulling back to show us the entire panorama. Thus the dancers who relate the story of the lovers through kinetic poetry while the principal singers do the same with vocal artistry hardly ever appear. Pity.

The production of Mr. Vick is set, not very originally, in the 1950s, the period that has become a Regietheater cliché. But when the curtain went up for Act 2, those of us who think that just a little too much deference is shown to Franco Zeffirelli laughed out loud at Mr. Vick’s parody of the overcrowded Café Momus set from Mr. Zeffirelli’s “La Bohème.” Here Chez Bullier is a coffee truck converted to a bar, with glitzy neon silhouettes of showgirls adorning its fringes. Where in the world are we? Paris? Vienna? Santa Monica? And why is everyone singing in Italian?