Gilbert didn’t only collaborate with Sullivan, and for many years Alfred Cellier was an indispensable part of the D’Oyly Carte operation. He was a successful theatre composer in his own right: his operetta Dorothy (1886) outstripped even The Mikado at the box office. The Mountebanks (1892), Cellier’s last (but not first) collaboration with Gilbert, dates from Gilbert’s post-Gondoliers estrangement from Sullivan – and, for many listeners, The Gondoliers will be the first point of comparison.

The setting is rural Sicily and the plot involves bandits, strolling players and two pairs of young lovers; all for various reasons pretending to be something they’re not. Cue a plot device that Sullivan consistently rejected: the ‘magic lozenge’ (here, a potion) that transforms everyone into the thing they’re pretending to be. This is topsy-turvydom with a vengeance (one character is called Risotto), and Cellier rises to it with style and charm. His instinct is perhaps more purely lyrical than Sullivan’s; choruses of monks suggest Grand Opera while there’s a delightful, Offenbach ish musical-box number for two actors who believe they’ve turned into clockwork dolls.

It receives a warm, polished account from John Andrews and the BBC Concert Orchestra. The cast is splendid: Soraya Mafi (as the village beauty Teresa) is one of our brightest young exponents of this repertoire, and while she phrases the score’s finest item, ‘Whispering breeze’, with lovely poise, the sweetness of her tone has just the right, slightly tart edge for her comic numbers. James Cleverton nicely combines briskness and bluster as the bandit chief Arrostino, while John Savournin and Catherine Carby are luxury casting for the two clockwork thespians. And if the whole thing has a slightly studio-bound ambience, everyone here at least sounds as if they’re enjoying themselves.

In short, The Mountebanks will be welcomed by all Savoyards, and it’s coupled with Cellier’s Suite symphonique: four movements of dancelike melodic lightness. Regretfully, then, I have to admit that Sullivan may have been right in rejecting Gilbert’s ‘lozenge plot’: because, next to the delirious comic logic of (say) The Mikado, The Mountebanks sprawls – even with the spoken dialogue omitted. Parts of Gilbert’s libretto are distinctly bottom-drawer (‘Oh you little gypsies / Pretty pipsy-wipsies!’), as if he needed the discipline of working with his old sparring partner.

But you’ll have to go online to find out, because Dutton provide neither libretto (it can be downloaded from their website) nor even – inexcusably – a brief synopsis. And they cut the overture, which happens to be the finale of the Suite symphonique. Since it was already in the can – and since the first disc lasts barely 60 minutes – that seems like a false economy. Dutton have done valuable work here in documenting a lost score: they should spare some thought for listeners who might want to sit back and enjoy it as a complete musical experience.