It’s tempting to encapsulate Bernstein’s opera-in-miniature Trouble in Tahiti as Woody Allen meets Aaron Copland – except that his sensitive exploration of a relationship in crisis doesn’t play it for laughs, while his score is a highly individual melange of styles rather than a derivate play-safe. Written in 1952, this might well be the “great American opera” Bernstein always wanted to write. Certainly when he incorporated it into the extended canvas of a 1980s “sequel”, A Quiet Place, more became significantly less, and this new recording by French conductor Pascal Verrot demonstrates that great things are often better off in smaller packets.

Sam and Dinah – the opera’s main protagonists – live an archetypal suburban existence. On the surface they’re the perfect FDR “New Deal” couple, but their dysfunctional life quickly becomes apparent, and Bernstein’s libretto follows their journey to its uneasy truce. Musically the piece employs a close-harmony vocal trio in the role of a Greek Chorus, and the authenticity of Bernstein’s Andrews Sisters vocal writing and his Benny Goodman clarinet obbligati is a well judged evocation of time and place. Verrot’s Orchestre de Picardie sit right inside not only the big-band crackle of Bernstein’s jazz, but also the brooding music that underscores Sam’s and Dinah’s emotional crisis.

Structurally Bernstein overlaps scenes to fake simultaneous levels of time, like the collage approach of novelist John Dos Passos. Verrot intercuts with the jagged narrative of newsreel, and only the strong French accent of the vocal trio detracts from the performance. But inappropriate accents in recordings of Bernstein musicals at least have a long and distinguished history.