Other continental early music luminaries may flee from talk of Purcell, but as one of the most distinctive and intelligent countertenors around, Gérard Lesne fancies his chances. These are performances in which delectable vocal coloration and abstract musical ideas seem to prevail over projection of text. Perhaps Lesne imagines himself as a Frenchman in 17th-century London (it being a highly cosmopolitan city) when he sings, in If music be the food of love, ‘Playsueres invide both oi and ear’.

In fact, in a strange kind of way, Lesne presents these songs with an indefinably exotic and poignant personality which would be hard to bring off if one could understand every single word in the best Queen’s English. He imbues the melancholic songs with the kind of mesmerising dark vowels which impart so much of the kernel of the conceit of pieces such as the ground bass song, What a sad fate or the deep personal loss expressed in Incassum, Lesbia at the death of Mary II. It helps here that Lesne boasts a resonant chest voice which can summon an unforced intensity with uncommon ease. In this intelligently programmed recital, there are no songs for which his voice-type is not suited and only occasionally does the continuo battery get the better of his delicate higher strains (in If pray’rs and tears).

There isn’t, perhaps, quite the suggestive naughtiness in Lesne’s demeanour to carry off the lighted-hearted numbers (and the brief instrumental interludes are a touch short on roughage) but there is a theatrical elegance and sophistication which makes Bacchus is a pow’r divine a good ruse – but you’ll need the text to decipher the last word (‘drunk’). Overall, Lesne’s good taste, intimate expressivity and sheer beauty of tone present Purcell’s songs in a memorable new light.