Revivals of Les Huguenots are sufficiently few and far between to provide on each occasion an opportunity to react and judge afresh. Each time there is probably a whole host of us hoping that this will be ‘it’: the work will break through and reveal at last a secret quality which will enable us (as we would like) to join in spirit with those 19th-century audiences with whom it was such a favourite. All those numbers celebrated in days gone by – the Duel septet, the ‘Conjuration’ and ‘Bénédiction des Poignards’ – they once seemed to be at the very heart of Grand Opera. And the solos – the Page’s song, Raoul’s cavatina, the Queen’s ‘beau pays’ – they must in those days have fulfilled the opera-goer’s ideal of richly melodic lyricism. Yet each time I find the willingness beaten back, often by bar-to-bar banality, and more pervasively by the ignoble compromise between the subject matter, a tragedy of historical outrage, and the manner, which is that of a grand public entertainment.

Equally, it must be said that each new hearing arouses some new admiration. With the recording from Montpellier (Erato, 9/90, now deleted) it was the structure: the sheer scale of it, but also its balance and proportion. This time it has been the sense of a rough vitality, or perhaps a vitality in the roughness. The chorus of noisy nobles at Nevers’ party, the old Lutheran’s ‘Piff, paff, pouf’ with its untamed intervals and primitive accompaniment, the Pré-aux-Clercs scene opening Act 3 with its holiday-makers and war-wishing soldiers: these bring a whiff of something seditious into the opera house, or at least add a more spicy flavour to the bulky banquet.

That they do so in this particular recording is probably due to the conductor Renato Palumbo. It is an opera that requires more than a firm hand: the big ensembles need to take fire, and they do. That is the best feature of the performance, which is unlikely to go down in history among those legendary ‘nights of the seven stars’. The seven here are a curious assortment (of nationalities, for one thing, and French pronunciation for another). Only one, the St Bris (Luca Grassi), struck me as a singer with a good voice and thoroughly even production. The others are in the ‘good-but’ class. The Queen is fluent and good on high but with vibrancy too close to a tremolo. Valentine is good at best but variable, Raoul sometimes thrilling (school of Corelli) but lacking elegance, Marcel sonorous but lumpy. The page, Urbain, has a lively manner, a pleasing voice and a technique that serves her well in cadenzas but stops short of a genuine trill. Always a ‘but’. In fact there is probably not much point in prolonging the agony. While the Decca recording of 1970 is still available, that is clearly the preferable choice (despite its weakness in the tenor Anastasios Vrenios). The Montpellier had a much better Raoul in Richard Leech, but otherwise was not stronger vocally than this. Both of the earlier versions were less constricted in recorded sound than this from Martina Franca, which has, however, the advantage of being on three discs rather than four.