Giulio Ricordi will always be remembered as the tenacious publisher who engineered Verdi’s collaboration with Boito and later championed Puccini, Giordano and Montemezzi, among others. Under the pseudonym Jules Burgmein, however, he was also a composer in his own right, producing a number of orchestral and chamber works, along with three operettas, of which La secchia rapita, premiered in Turin in 1910, was the second.

Its source is Alessandro Tomassi’s scabrous mock epic of the same name, published in 1622 and later translated into English as The Rape of the Bucket, which satirises the futility of war in its depiction of the conflict that erupts between Modena and Bologna after the stupid Count of Culagna (the name means ‘arse-land’) filches a bucket belonging to a Bolognese innkeeper. The war, in turn, forms a backdrop to a series of erotic tales dealing with the multiple adulteries of Culagna and his Countess, and their relationships with Renoppia, an Amazonian warrior after the fashion of Tasso’s Clorinda, and the soldier Titta, who is sexually drawn, Cherubino-like, to every woman he meets.

Renato Simoni’s libretto downplays Tomassi’s scatological emphasis but fashions a beautifully constructed farce from the sprawling narrative. Influenced by both Verdi and Offenbach, the score, however, is uneven. Too much of the first act, in particular, is undistinguished, though Ricordi strikes form at its close with a pithy strophic song for Culagna which could have strayed from La vie parisienne, followed by a sextet finale, in which three parallel love duets develop in Falstaff-like counterpoint. Highlights later on include a deliciously louche trio, in which the Countess and Renoppia fight for the attentions of the more than willing Titta, and an affectionate parody of the Preziosilla scenes in Forza, when Renoppia leads Modena’s Women’s Army into battle.

The work enjoyed a moderate success in Italy in the years immediately after its premiere, but dropped from the repertory, understandably perhaps, during the First World War. Dynamic’s new recording was made live last year in Milan, during its first modern revival – a series of concert performances without dialogue, its soloists and chorus drawn from students from the Claudio Abbado Civic Music School. Like the work itself, it gets off to a tentative start, with Dyana Bovolo’s Innkeeper, Laure Kieffer’s Countess and Hyuskoo Kim’s Titta all sounding hesitant in their opening numbers, though they gain in confidence as the performance progresses. Giorgio Valerio has terrific fun as the dimwit Culagna, and Lucia Amarilli Sala makes much of the emotional vulnerability that lurks beneath Renoppia’s tough facade. Aldo Salvagno can’t disguise the work’s flaws but conducts with considerable élan. The booklet, meanwhile, gives Simoni’s text complete, including the missing dialogue: it makes for entertaining reading, so have a look at it before you listen.