Premiered at La Fenice in 1797, when Venice was occupied by Napoleon’s troops, Simon Mayr’s take on the Telemachus-Calypso legend crosses Italian opera seria with the French fashion for dance interludes and choral tableaux. Mozart had done likewise with Idomeneo, though there the similarity ends. Telemaco certainly has its moments. Mayr’s melodic invention can beguile, as in Telemachus’s cavatina as he succumbs to the island’s enchanted landscape, or the graceful, rather Gluckian minuet chorus in Act 2. And while his scoring, unlike Mozart’s, rarely enhances the drama, his writing for flutes, clarinets and horns, especially, is typically colourful and lavish (Rossini praised Mayr for ‘using the instruments with abandon, rather than with diffidence according to the rules’).

There are moments of theatrical intensity, too, as in the ensemble where Mentore – a figure akin to Virtue in Baroque allegories – rails against Calypso’s cult of hedonism. But dramatic momentum is never sustained, due partly to Antonio Sografi’s creaky libretto, partly to the irredeemable amiability of Mayr’s musical personality. Many a movement promises more than it ultimately delivers, not least the distraught Calypso’s final aria, which begins with a potentially fruitful Gluckian ostinato but soon tips into buffo cheerfulness – the work’s default mode. In his finest operas, including Medea in Corinto and La Lodoiska, Mayr can build whole scenes to an effective climax. Here his instincts are to decorate rather than dramatise. In the Act 2 finale, the tension of the encounter between the lovelorn Calypso and the vacillating Telemachus is fatally undermined by music more apt to a comic Singspiel, complete with twittering flute solos.

Still, if you accept Telemaco primarily as a polished vocal-instrumental concert, there’s plenty to enjoy in this latest offering in Naxos’s Mayr series using forces from the composer’s native Bavaria. Franz Hauk directs his trim period band with style and affection, though rhythms can sometimes jog where something hungrier would have been welcome. Of the soloists, the standout is Siri Karoline Thornhill in what was originally a soprano castrato role. She dispatches her coloratura with grace and panache, and characterises Telemachus’s unenviable plight as much as Mayr’s decorous idiom allows. Andrea Lauren Brown’s slenderer soprano has the agility for Calypso’s music, and she sings her charming Act 2 love song alluringly. A more sulphurous chest register would have helped mitigate the frivolity of her final aria. As the staunchly moralising Mentore, Markus Schäfer compensates for some reedy tone with his intelligent, incisive delivery; and the sweet-toned young Korean soprano Jaewon Yun makes her mark in the small role of Calypso’s confidante Eucari. There is an informative booklet essay and a (reasonably) helpful track-by-track synopsis, though if you do investigate, be warned that the Italian libretto, available online, comes without English translation – frustrating cheese-paring on Naxos’s part.