Barely a handful of Offenbach's over 90 operettas can be said to be even relatively well known to today's public, and it seems clear from this highspirited disc that we are missing out on a prime source of light-hearted enjoyment—from a highly skilled musician, not a mere top-line tunesmith. Lovers of 'proper opera' who know their Tales of Hoffman are likely to receive a jolt when they find that its world-famous barcarolle started life associated not with a courtesan on a Venetian canal but, 17 years earlier, with water-sprites on the Rhine (Die Rheinnixen, one of only three works written for Vienna, seems also to show an awareness of Wagner's Tannhauser); and Dapertutto's aria in that same Venetian act is foreshadowed in the Overture to Le voyage dans la lune. Another surprise is in store with the Overture to Orphee aux enfers, for this is not the familiar one but the longer—and, it has to be admitted, rather disjointed—overture composed when the work was revised from a two-acter to a four-acter in 1874; but it contains some most felicitous ideas. The ballet music in this operetta demonstrates that Offenbach can not unfairly be ranked with Delibes, whose Coppelia had appeared only just previously: the Philharmonia woodwind in particular distinguish themselves in the ''Dance of the fauns'', and there is a delectably neat oboe solo in the ''Entry of the shepherds''.
The ''Snowflakes ballet'' in Le voyage dans la lune, composed a year later, is even better: its jaunty polka (in which again the woodwind shine), or at least its first section, is familiar out of context. The Overture to the earliest (1862) work here, the one-act Monsieur et Madarne Denis, is largely cast in an elegant waltz rhythm; that to Le roi Carotte alternates between pomposity and delicacy, and that to Maitre Peronilla is perhaps the most engaging of all, with an easy flow of invention. Antonio de Almeida should be thanked for resuscitating these pieces in their original scoring (and for putting in hand the making of new orchestral parts specially for the recording): he brings gaiety, enthusiasm and buoyancy to the performances, the sound engineers capture a true and clean sonority, and the Philharmonia sound as if they are enjoying themselves—as well they might.'