When the colourful Arthurian opera Merlin appeared on disc nearly three years ago (12/00), it came as a surprise even to many lovers of Spanish music that Isaac Albéniz had written a series of operas to English texts. Merlin’s success, however, has led to this second issue, the first of Albéniz’s English operas, Henry Clifford. Unlike Merlin, it did win an immediate staging, in Italian translation, at the Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona in May 1895, but then came oblivion.

We owe it to the English banker and philanthropist Francis Burdett Money-Coutts that Albéniz turned in this unexpected direction. After seeing Albéniz’s English operetta The Magic Opal in London in 1893, Money-Coutts decided that the Spanish composer was just the man to compose an English equivalent to Wagner’s Ring cycle, to libretti that he, Money-Coutts, wrote himself. From then on he gave generous support to Albéniz and his family, and Henry Clifford, a story of love and conflicting loyalties set at the time of the Wars of the Roses, was the first result.

As with Merlin, the big snag is the libretto, for sadly, Money-Coutts’s talents as a poet were nil. The nearest parallel is the verse of William McGonagall, with stricter scansion but without the unintended humour. It added to Albéniz’s problems that Money-Coutts regularly favours rhymed couplets with very short lines, so that a clonking rhyme, often an archaic word that makes doubtful sense, halts the flow every few seconds, obviously getting in the way of lyrical flights in the music.

That said, it is amazing to what degree Albéniz overcomes the burden of the words, for though the story itself, often slow-moving, has its confusions, with necromancy and the supernatural mixed with historical incident, there are many musical felicities. As with Merlin there are few if any signs of a Spanish flavour, and the melodies soar engagingly in a fresh, English way, notably in writing for the female characters, at times ecstatically in duet: Lady Clifford, the hero’s mother, Lady Saint John, on the opposing Yorkist side and reputedly a witch, and her daughter, Annie Saint John, who Henry Clifford falls in love with the moment he sees her, addressing her gauchely with the line, ‘O maiden dear, I’ll win thee if I may’.

Where Acts 1 and 2 are separated into distinct numbers, Act 3 is through-composed, though the idiom remains constant. Another inconsistency is that Act 1 is set after the battle of Towton, when Henry VI of Lancaster was deposed, and Acts 2 and 3 come at the overthrow of the last Yorkist king, Richard III. Though in history that was 20 years later, the period here is telescoped to three years, with Henry Clifford, outlawed under the Yorkists, hiding away disguised as a shepherd, magically protected from his enemies by Lady Saint John and Annie.

Each act brings its memorable passages – the unaccompanied chorus of mourning for the hero’s father in Act 1, and the haunting duet, ‘O happy days’, for Lady Clifford and Lady Saint John, not to mention the love duets for Henry and Annie in Acts 2 and 3. Each brings distant echoes of

Tristan und Isolde, much shortened and simplified, with Annie declaring ‘I will give thee kisses three, our eternal bond to be!’ There are English echoes, too, with one or two hints of Sullivan in the choral writing, and the second dance of the fairies in Act 2, bringing a hint of Edward German, quite likely influences when Albéniz was based in London in the early 1890s. Each act then ends with a rousing ensemble, commendably brief and lively.

The recording was made last year in Madrid, again, as for Merlin, with Michael Haas as producer and José De Eusebio as conductor; the latter, the prime mover behind the project, prepared the score for performance, reconciling inconsistencies between half-a-dozen different sources. Two leading members of the Merlin cast also return: Jane Henschel, an outstanding Morgan-le-Fay before, as Lady Saint John, again relishing supernatural powers in her rich, firm mezzo, and baritone Carlos Álvarez as Lord Saint John.

Alessandra Marc as Lady Clifford makes a fine foil for Jane Henschel, and though Ana María Martínez as Annie initially has some edgy moments, she copes very sweetly later with the challengingly high tessitura of the brilliant soprano part. In the title role, the tenor, Aquiles Machado, sings with a winningly warm timbre, though there again Albéniz sets his principal a formidable challenge in writing at the upper extremes of the voice, with Machado occasionally taxed to the limit. Though the booklet offers admirable essays on the opera by the conductor as well as Walter Aaron Clark, author of the pioneering book on the composer, along with synopsis, libretto and translations, it is a pity no room was found for profiles of the singers, all remarkably fluent and clear in enunciating the English text.

Those who enjoyed Merlin should certainly sample this and it will appeal to anyone who enjoys an operatic costume drama in a warm, late-romantic idiom, ripely orchestrated. Though Henry Clifford may not be as polished as Merlin, it offers a similarly colourful and atmospheric experience, very well recorded in full-bodied sound. It is good that De Eusebio is behind the project to record another of Albéniz’s operas, one which for a time at least had a precarious hold on the repertory: Pepita Jiménez, based on the romantic novel of Juan Valera, again has a libretto by Money-Coutts.