wL3??nor Bruschino has been lucky on record, which is how it should be since it is the best of the one-act farse Rossini wrote in Venice in 1810-13. In an ideal world, the abrasive energy of Jacek Kaspszyk’s conducting on the Pavane disc would have been married to Ion Marin’s Deutsche Grammophon cast. That cast, you may recall, has Samuel Ramey as Gaudenzio, Kathleen Battle as Sofia, Frank Lopardo as Florville and Jennifer Larmore in the role of the servant girl Marianna. It also has a fine Bruschino, Claudio Desderi – the conductor of this new Naxos disc, a studio recording made in Ferrara, so the booklet tells us, in May 2002.

It is not, I fear, a particularly enlivening affair. Neither the producer nor the balance engineer appears to have realised just how important the orchestra is in establishing the opera’s uproarious, devil-take-the-hindmost mood; added to which, Desderi’s conducting is safe rather than exciting. Nor is the performance at all well sung. In key roles such as Gaudenzio and Sofia, the kind of cut-price ‘C’ list singers Naxos typically engages simply aren’t up to the job. Switching back to the DG set – or even to the Pavane which has an excellent Sofia in Alicja Slowakiewicz – is invariably a case of ‘for that relief, much thanks’.

About a quarter of the opera is recitative and here the new performance is rather good. On the other hand, there is no English translation of the text, merely a somewhat laboured track-by-track synopsis, which is not really an option when it comes to elucidating a lightly written, fast-moving comedy such as this.

For a ‘library’ version, to be savoured with a full text and translation and all the trappings of a properly produced opera recording, the DG set is the one to have. The orchestra is not ideally forward there either but the sound image is sharper and the cast is superb. The Pavane recording also lacks a translation but there it matters less since, with Kaspszyk in charge, Bruschino is alchemised into a form of musical gunpowder – a case of light the blue touch-paper, take cover and wait for the fireworks to begin.