For its 13th volume (which I hope does not presage its demise) the series comes home to sup with the master of the musical salon himself. From the Soirées musicales of the 1830s to the Péchés de vieillesse, Rossini exercised the light touch with the firm hand, and his villa in the Bois de Boulogne, shown in a fine introductory illustration to the booklet, became the centre of civilised Saturday night entertainment in Paris. The songs heard here preserve the flavour of those evenings much as potpourri may the scent of past summers.

Presiding at the piano is Malcolm Martineau, a congenial presence now as he surely would have been then. With sufficient (and not excessive) play of light and shade in both tempo and touch, he opens the proceedings with his single solo, the Danse sibérienne. First of the singers is the twice-welcome Lawrence Brownlee – the double accolade accounted for by the ideal suitability of his vibrant, clear-cut tenor voice, elegance of style and technical accomplishment and to the fact that, since encountering him in the new Record of Singing, I’ve personally found that I want to hear as much of him as possible. When Jennifer Larmore joins him for the duet “Les amants de Séville”, we are treated to some of the most delightful singing of the whole soirée.

Larmore herself is in splendid form: her “Chanson du bébé” with the dear little horror’s artless cries of “Pipi, maman, papa, caca” is a winner among party-pieces. At the far end of the programme there are a number of choral items performed immaculately by the Geoffrey Mitchell Choir. Particularly charming is the last of all, Toast pour le nouvel an, a “dapper brindisi” as Richard Osborne describes it in his notes – notes which manage to be economical but tell you what you want to know and are clearly drawn from an immense reservoir of background knowledge.