Fabio Biondi’s recording of The Raftsman was made in tandem with concert performances of the work given in Warsaw to mark the bicentenary of Moniuszko’s birth last year. The piece itself dates from 1858, and is widely regarded as consolidating his national style in the wake of the successful Polish premiere of Halka, first heard in Vilnius 10 years previously. Audiences were enthusiastic and have seemingly remained so in Poland, though The Raftsman’s first critics were apparently guarded in their response, considering Moniuszko to be unduly serious in his approach to a subject they deemed slight.

Set in a community living by and working on the river Vistula, it deals with the rivalry between the raftsman Franek and the feckless hairdresser Jakub for the hand of Zosia, daughter of the wealthy fisherman Antoni. There are flaws of shape: a protracted exposition and a rather abrupt denouement, in which Franek and Jakub discover they are actually long-lost brothers. The score, however, is remarkably effective. Zosia and Franek have some beautiful arias and a fine love duet. Jakub is a delightful figure, urbane, witty, a real charmer on the make. The river itself, meanwhile, is as much a protagonist as any of the characters, its ebb, flow and occasional turbulence wonderfully depicted in both the Overture and the swaying songs for Franek and his crew.

It’s well served here. Biondi’s conducting combines dramatic momentum with great refinement and a deep awareness of the opera’s ambiguities of mood. The orchestral sound is lean and clear, and there’s some terrific playing and choral singing, particularly in the storm that threatens to sink Franek’s raft in the opening scene. Ewa Tracz does fine things with the big dumka to which Zosia frets about her lover’s absence, braves Aleksander Teliga’s tetchy Antoni with considerable vehemence and sounds really impassioned in her duet with Matheus Pompeu’s virile, ardent Franek. Best of all, perhaps, is Mariusz Godlewski’s Jakub, his almost fastidious elegance barely concealing the ironic laughter in his voice. It’s a lovely performance, and a real treat.

Moniusko’s last opera Beata, however, was a failure at its 1872 premiere. Instead of the grand patriotic statement his audiences seemingly expected, he came up with an abrasive comedy set in a Swiss village, where his eponymous heroine has been conned by local gossips into believing she has been disfigured by smallpox, and to which her lover Max returns from war, posing as having been blinded in action in order to spy on her after being persuaded by his rival Hans into thinking she is unfaithful. It remained unpublished for more than a century. Moniuszko’s manuscript of the full score was destroyed by fire in 1939 and we owe its rediscovery to the composer Krzysztof Baculewski, whose performing edition, based on Moniuszko’s piano score and first heard in 2002, forms the basis for this live 2018 recording from the Kraków Opera, enthusiastically conducted by Tomasz Tokarczyk.

Godlewski, the only singer common to both discs, again gives the finest performance here as the English oculist Sir Henryk Volsey, who shoulders the responsibility of curing the metaphorical blindness that surrounds him. The demanding title-role requires a lyric-dramatic soprano capable of coloratura fireworks in the closing waltz song, and Katarzina Oles´-Blacha rises to its challenges with considerable aplomb if occasional effort. ukasz Zae˛ski makes a grainy-sounding Max, while Janusz Ratajczak sounds suitably unctuous as Hans. No libretto is provided, however, which is a major drawback. Unlike The Raftsman, Beata uses dialogue, and reams of it, rather than recitative, which makes for long stretches of very difficult listening without the text.