It takes a certain amount of audacity to show the French how to stage Carmen, but that’s exactly what Adrian Noble and John Eliot Gardiner did in 2009 in, of all places, the Opéra-Comique, the site – if not the same building – where Bizet’s masterpiece premiered in 1875. That premiere was less than successful. The audience was shocked by its dramatic realism and co-librettist Ludovic Halévy noted ‘coldness’ for much of the evening. It often performed to a half-empty house during its initial run until Bizet’s early death just three months later.

Carmen has undergone plenty of radical stage productions since then, but Noble’s is not one of them. There’s nothing to upset the horses here … not that there are any, unlike Francesca Zambello’s Royal Opera staging a few years earlier. There are similarities between Noble and Zambello’s approaches, though: they share a similar colour palette of oranges and terracottas, boast stylish period costumes and feature curved walls to suggest the Seville square, mountains or a bullring.

They also share the same soprano in the title-role – Anna Caterina Antonacci. She is superb, less sexually predatory than at Covent Garden but more subtle in the intimate setting of the Comique. She sings the role with tremendous style and her characterisation, right down to the spoken dialogue, is entirely convincing. Her Don José, American tenor Andrew Richards, sings with plenty of passion, if not with the same allure as the young Jonas Kaufmann at the ROH.

Belgian soprano Anne-Catherine Gillet is a superb Micaëla, with an appealing, fresh tone that exudes sweet innocence. ‘Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante’ is beautifully sung – you can see how Carmens everywhere fear a Micaëla who can pull off this tricky aria, as it can be a show-stealer! Nicolas Cavallier doesn’t quite have the low notes for Escamillo but he certainly presents a suave toreador, and the minor roles are well cast and the street urchins are wonderfully scruffy.

Historically informed Gardiner doesn’t restore much of the original score – we get the usual habanera rather than the jaunty original – but Riccardo Novaro’s Moralès is given a restored number with chorus in Act 1 (which Ludovic Tézier sang on Michel Plasson’s EMI recording – now on Warner, 3/03). Gardiner injects plenty of period-instrument vim and vigour with his splendid Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, which takes Carmen back to her opéra comique roots rather than treating it as some overblown grand opera, which it is not. The playing is superb (as is the recorded sound on this Naxos reissue) and you can tell Gardiner relishes every moment.