Dubbed ‘a magical cabaret’ by conductor Laurence Equilbey, this is the album of a theatrical performance that, poignantly, was due to open in Paris in June. The concept – exploring various forms of magic through Mozart’s operas – may work brilliantly when (we hope) it eventually appears on stage. As a CD programme it has a random, bitty feel that left me simultaneously wanting more and less. The one logical sequence of numbers here, from Act 1 of Die Zauberflöte, is broken by an archaic Ricercar from Mozart’s prepubescent potpourri Galimathias musicum. Solos from Figaro are arbitrarily shuffled, with Cherubino’s arias, in reverse order, split by the Countess’s ‘Porgi amor’, and ‘Dove sono’ tacked on after Barbarina’s plaintive ‘pin’ song – a solo that never works well out of context. Don Giovanni’s two arias also come the wrong way round. Scattered into the mix are, inter alia, slivers from a fragmentary Pantomime (music for a masked ball in which Mozart played Harlequin), a comic ‘cat’ duet (orchestrated but not composed by Mozart) from the collaborative opera Der Stein der Weisen, and Colas’s nonsense incantation from Mozart’s childhood Singspiel Bastien und Bastienne.

If you can cope with this apparent arbitrariness, there is some classy singing on offer, finely supported by Equilbey’s lively period band. Sandrine Piau’s sensuous, silvery Countess – fiery, too, in the Allegro of ‘Dove sono’ – makes one want to hear her in the complete role. Ditto Lea Desandre’s glowingly urgent Cherubino and Florian Sempey’s Don Giovanni, seductive in the Serenade, oozing high-testosterone bravado in the Champagne aria. And how many high baritones could sound as rotundly basso as Sempey in the Entführung drinking duet? Coloratura Jodie Devos duly delivers as Queen of the Night and communes tenderly with oboe in the ‘insertion’ aria Vorrei spiegarvi – a lovely performance. Both tenors, too, are excellent. For the moment (almost) all was forgiven in a hushed, dreamlike ‘Soave sia il vento’ from Così, the three singers perfectly balanced. But then a wind machine broke the spell. Why?