Readers of Jules Verne will remember that among the treasures of human civilisation that Captain Nemo assembled in the library of the Nautilus was ‘sheet music by Weber, Rossini, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Herold, Wagner, Auber …’ It’s a cautionary tale in more ways than one. Auber’s stature as a classic is now almost completely submerged (at least in the UK), though I recall hearing the overtures to Fra Diavolo and Les diamants de la couronne in amateur concerts as recently as the early 1990s.

Well, it’s our loss. This is frequently delightful music, easily on a par with Meyerbeer or Donizetti, and if there’s something faintly quixotic about Naxos’s continuing project to commit Auber’s overtures to disc (along with a fair proportion of his ballet music), it’s no less listenable for it. This fifth disc in the series deals with the 1840 rags-to-riches romance Zanetta, and the Overture and extensive ballet music from Zerline (1851), whose orange-seller heroine (the libretto is by Scribe) is abducted by pirates before fulfilling her royal destiny. ‘The plot has little innate dramatic interest’, remarks Robert Letellier, whose booklet notes are exemplary.

But there’s musical interest here aplenty. The melodic invention – Italianate with a French accent – is winning, the orchestration is vivid and the Janáček Philharmonic play with considerable polish for Dario Salvi, with shapely woodwind and violin solos, and a jaunty lilt to the dance rhythms in the various quadrilles and styriennes. The two overtures develop a fine momentum. Overall, Salvi goes for grandeur and breadth rather than champagne sparkle: there’s certainly scope for more panache here, and Auber’s invention could surely support it. But these are attractive accounts of music that deserves better than its current obscurity.