The feared Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick was full of praise for A Santa Lucia but then he was using Tasca’s slice of Neapolitan life as a stick to beat its model, Cavalleria rusticana, so what did he know? After its successful premiere at the Kroll Opera in November 1892, A Santa Lucia became a vehicle for the 28-year-old Neapolitan diva Bellincioni, who had created the role of Santuzza, and Hanslick was bewitched by her most of all: ‘It borders on the miraculous how word and gesture, sound and facial expression inseparably converge in most convincing truth, in most touching emotion … And in this realistic truth, even in passionate affects, Bellincioni keeps things within measure and preserves a feeling of beauty.’

By that measure the Bulgarian soprano Iordanka Derilova has a lot to live up to. In the Pathé discs made near the end of her career Bellincioni could still call upon a light and quick vibrato, and a relatively youthful centre to her voice. Derilova’s mezzo-ish timbres rather call to mind later, memorably fiery Santuzza singers from the east such as Obraztsova and Elena Nicolai. She is well contrasted with Rita Kapfhammer as Maria, the villain of the piece, and their swiftly pointed second-act scene draws on the energy of the Dessau theatre’s staging, in a live-sounding recording with minimal stage noise and no applause, to invite favourable comparison with later verismo showdowns such as the Act 3 party scene in Adriana Lecouvreur.

All the same, Pierantonio Tasca’s almost total obscurity is understandable: his best-known piece lived and died with Bellincioni, and the Sicilian-born composer does not share Mascagni’s melodic gifts, Cilea’s sense of theatre or Puccini’s orchestral genius. Named after and set in a gritty harbour district of Naples, A Santa Lucia cries out for the kind of dark and swirling sound world of Il tabarro but receives instead a picture-postcard setting replete with mandolins, guitars and a none-too-well-tuned organ for the inevitable first-act climax in a church.

That story is the work of the Neapolitan poet Enrico Golisciani, later librettist for Wolf-Ferrari’s Jewels of the Madonna, stronger on local colour and repartee than really telling lines. In brief: the fisherman Ciccillo loves the penniless Rosella. With her he has a daughter, whom all believe to be the child of his late sister. According to Neapolitan custom, Ciccillo has been engaged since childhood to Maria, who flares up at any sign of affection between Rosella and Ciccillo. He goes to sea for a year; his father takes Rosella as a household help and falls in love with the young woman, not knowing that this will make him his son’s rival. Maria uses her knowledge to make the returned Ciccillo furiously jealous. He repels Rosella, who plunges into the sea. Cue the mandolins.

None of the roles is glamorously sung and there are plenty of rough edges to the Dessau orchestra’s playing, but the blood flows thanks to Markus Frank’s sensitive and flexible conducting, and fans of verismo rarities need not hesitate.