Here is enough charm to occupy an evening, though probably not more. Gounod’s 1860 opéra comique La colombe finds the composer devising homely if rather predictable music for a domestic drama played out by just four characters. The plot, based on a fable by Jean de la Fontaine, is made even simpler and lighter than in the original. Only a French composer would be attracted to a libretto which culminates in a culinary crisis over what to cook for dinner.

In 1923 Diaghilev invited Poulenc to add music to some of the spoken passages of La colombe and it is his version that is used here, though one would be hard-pressed to identify where Gounod stops and Poulenc starts. The vocal parts are undemanding (the Guildhall School of Music has revived the piece several times) and the staging can easily make do with simple realism. That is more or less what it gets here: the action, if such it can be called, is updated to the later 20th century but the setting is as traditional as could be, a picturesque cottage in the French countryside. The filming of the production, made at Compiègne in 1994, is average quality for its date – but please note there are no extras, not even subtitles.

Musical standards under conductor Michel Swierczewski are decent. The most characterful number is an aria about the art of cooking, delivered with some relish by Jean-Philippe Courtis. It is a shame that Ghyslaine Raphanel, who sings Silvie, turns shrill in her coloratura, but the modest tenor of François-Nicolas Geslot offers some stylish singing as her admirer, Horace. The part of Mazet, Horace’s servant, was originally a trouser role for mezzo but is nicely taken here by the boyish tenor Antoine Normand. Perhaps in their keenness to give the drama some substance, the cast tend to overact, which lessens the sense of realism elsewhere. The title-role, though, is taken by a real live dove, so it is a good thing Gounod’s light-hearted treatment of the story does not involve it getting roasted at the end of the performance. Overall, a very modest pleasure.