There are several good reasons for welcoming this celebrated recording to the Great Recordings of the Century, the first recipient of the Gramophone Award for Music Theatre in 1989. At the top of this list is the glorious singing of the sensational cast, the likes of whom one would be unlikely to encounter in the theatre. Under John McGlinn’s warm but never sentimental direction, they sing, as the London Sinfonietta play, with all the awareness and style that any period performance might receive with due attention given to the lyrics as well as the music. In the tricky matter of dialogue over underscoring, a Kern speciality here, the same equation pervades throughout. In addition, the Ambrosian Chorus, who were on hand for so many operatic recordings of this era, sing with terrific zest.

The appendix includes such gems as the extended Pantry scene where Frederica von Stade beguiles us with some charming music that was later cut, a wonderful trio of songs from the 1936 Universal picture, and Kern’s final song, “Nobody else but me”, which turned out to be an innovative coda to his great career.

The GROC presentation omits the libretto. We have a new running order of the musical numbers, an essay by Richard Osborne which adroitly covers much ground in the original booklet and a plot synopsis updated with cross-references to the appendices.