At the height of the Munich carnival a penniless artist falls in love with a princess in disguise: 1917 must surely have been the last moment at which these classic operetta gambits could plausibly be deployed in a setting described as ‘the present’. In fact, the genesis of Kálmán’s Die Faschingsfee is more complex than its plot. Originally composed for Budapest as Zsuzsi kisasszony, it was a hit in New York as Miss Springtime (PG Wodehouse co-wrote a new English libretto) before finally making it to Vienna, where critics remarked that Kálmán’s ‘Munich’ sounded curiously Hungarian and the latest (German) librettist was nonplussed to hear barrel organs playing the melodies before he’d even finished writing the words.

Still, you can’t blame those buskers. This is the show that Kálmán wrote immediately before the all-conquering Die Csárdásfürstin, and it’s cut from the same melodic cloth. If the plot is reminiscent of Lehár’s The Count of Luxembourg, the tunes are prime Kálmán, by turns lush and lively with (in Act 2, particularly) more than a splash of paprika. This 2017 production from Munich’s Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz brings Die Faschingsfee home. Taken from live performances, the spoken dialogue is animated and realistic, and the recorded balance – with the orchestra noticeably recessed in relation to the singers – is convincingly theatrical.

The cast sound as if they’re playing off each other too. Along with Daniel Prohaska as the artist Viktor, Camille Schnoor as the ‘carnival fairy’ Princess Alexandra Maria carries much of the musical action. Vocally, they make an attractive pair, with no shortage of warmth and style even if both tend to tighten at the top. Simon Schnorr as Hubert and Nadine Zeintl as Lori provide the comic relief, and he has a handsome enough baritone, though Zeintl’s nasal cabaret soprano was probably more persuasive on stage than on disc. The same goes for the enthusiastic but scrappy choral and ensemble singing; still, the conductor Michael Brandstätter snaps the livelier numbers smartly along, and lets the big waltz melodies of the two extended finales spread out and soar, allowing just the right amount of nostalgia to seep into Kálmán’s sunny little world.

The usual CPO provisos apply: there’s no libretto and the sketchy synopsis makes it almost impossible to match the individual numbers to the story, let alone identify more than a handful of the cast members. Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose, but it’d be nice – just once in a while – to be able to welcome one of these CPO rediscoveries with the unqualified enthusiasm that Kálmán deserves.