This programme, released on VHS by the Consort’s own label Musica Oscura in 1993, has now reappeared on DVD, and deserves attention both for its fine music-making and adventurous conception.

The actual performances appeared on Musica Oscura’s CD recording, warmly praised by Jonathan Freeman-Attwood (3/94), who remarked that their approach was more impassioned than in their famous Oiseau-Lyre version. Perhaps that reflected the purpose of this video, vividly recorded with high-definition TV technology in the banqueting apartments of the Gonzaga Dukes of Mantua, for whose entertainment many of these madrigals were created. In this intriguing setting, beneath the famously sensuous Mantuan frescoes, the Consort make a brave stab at recreating those original performances, mini-masques almost, with costume and dance. Rooley links them with an amiably informative commentary which should please both newcomers and enthusiasts.

The result is a welcome reminder of just how much of this music’s magic we lose in the customary stuffed-shirt recital. Nevertheless, it isn’t a total success. There’s still something ineffably polite about it all, the wholesome ‘G&S’ jollity that tends to creep in when the English middle-classes aspire to the orgiastic. One feels the aesthetical rakes of the era would have been less coy and more fiery in their entertainments. In the languishing ‘Parlo, miser’o’, the appearance of Mesdames Kirkby, Tubb and Nichols in diaphanous deshabillé could not be less than stirring, but can’t quite shed the aura of a merry Roedean dorm party.

All the same, this is an engaging and original programme, and founded on first-rate performances. It isn’t long, but it isn’t expensive either, and well worth investigating. Only insert-notes are lacking.