Purcell’s theatre music has not received a complete survey since Christopher Hogwood’s pioneering set from the 1970s and ’80s, and one assumes that a complete project is in the offing here. Unlike the famous semi-operas of the 1690s (such as the large-scale King Arthur and The Fairy Queen), the remaining theatre music is more incidental, though, representing Purcell’s main output in his last years, is still significant in quantity.

The playhouses witnessed many fine songs, instrumental pieces and choruses, many of which are still largely unknown. The instrumental music, assembled into suites and published posthumously as “Ayres for the Theatre” in 1697, fares better (among which both Amphitryon and The Gordian Knot Unty’d are celebrated examples) and the invigorating, if fairly uniform, performances from the Canadian Aradia Ensemble alight on the spit and sawdust of this often rugged though never less than elegant music.

If the character of the songs is boldly conveyed (“Blow, Boreas, blow” is quite an undertaking for any duo and performed here with unequivocal vim), the masterpiece is the great music for Circe – which still draws a blank in all but the most rarefied company. Placed incisively at a key moment at the end of Act 1 of Davenant’s play, Purcell’s music comprises a microcosm of pagan ritual in portentous choruses, ominous recitatives and airs of reeking gloom and sinister omens.

Kevin Mallon misses a few tricks here, not least knowing when to sit back on the beat and irradiate Purcell’s extraordinary blend of classical metrical air and spellbindingly inventive harmonic language. Yet, in this immaculate “scena”, we are still afforded a marvellously ornate soprano air from Nicole Bower, even if one is left with a sense of work done in a hurry, as the graphic chorus with the unforgettable setting of the words “famine, pestilence about you wait”, reveals to its cost. Worthy, professional and instinctively stylish but somewhat under-explored performances.