Chandos and the Peter Moores Foundation have made an excellent job of incorporating an operetta volume into their Opera in English series. They offer some of the more testing and rewarding arias for an operetta tenor, and there are no terrors for Bruce Ford in the high notes of ‘You Are My Heart’s Delight’ or the vocal leaps of Paris’s aria from La belle Hélène. One soon adjusts to the slightly hard edge to Ford’s voice and warms to his enviable control of dynamics and expression. If anything is missing, it’s perhaps a touch of fun or devilry, though there is something of the latter in Kálmán’s ‘Play, gypsy’, which Ford makes another of the best things here. If previous tenors make more of individual numbers, few are more consistently admirable throughout a whole CD.

What’s equally endearing is the strength of the supporting forces. There are full-blooded performances from orchestra and chorus, with idiomatic interpretations under a conductor steeped in the Viennese tradition, exotic instruments as required, and soprano and baritone contributions that ensure full authenticity and welcome variety.

If momentarily I raise an eyebrow at the inclusion in this ‘Viennese Operetta’ collection of one French aria and not one but two non-operetta items by Robert Stolz – one a Viennese song performed with authentic Schrammel-style accompaniment – it is justified by the delightful results achieved. Ford’s enunciation throughout is admirable, and the accompanying booklet fills in anything unclear in what’s being sung. In any language it’s a highly recommendable collection.