Under the Mediterranean sun, a young soldier falls hard for a free-spirited beauty – and sacrifices honour and happiness in pursuit of a doomed love. If the plot of Lehár’s Giuditta sounds reminiscent of Carmen, that’s because this was Lehár’s last and most serious shot at greatness: an operetta designed for the stage of the Vienna State Opera, no less. So don’t expect champagne-fuelled escapism à la Lustige Witwe. This is a musikalische Komödie in the sense that Carmen is an opéra comique, and Lehár gave it his all. It hasn’t been brilliantly served on disc. A good performance needs a conductor who can temper grand opera sweep with operetta Schwung, and a cast that’s willing to push well beneath its gorgeous surface.

This new recording under Ulf Schirmer gets impressively close. It’s clear from the expansive opening bars that Schirmer takes Giuditta seriously, and equally clear that his Munich orchestra is ready to rise to the occasion. The playing throughout is warm and transparent. Schirmer brings out every glint of the harp and rattle of the snare drum, and caresses Lehár’s swirling woodwind countermelodies – but, crucially, keeps the action moving forwards. That’s probably the single most impressive quality of this recording; that and its sheer generosity. This is the most complete version I’ve yet encountered of this often-cut score.

Schirmer’s cast get into the spirit of the drama, with Christiane Libor making an infinitely more seductive-sounding Giuditta than Edda Moser on Willi Boskovsky’s 1985 account with the same orchestra. Nikolai Schukoff, as Octavio, isn’t Richard Tauber; but then, who is? Schukoff’s dark, wide-grained tenor makes his heartbreak in the final scenes affectingly credible; equally, it’s good to hear the show’s great Tauberlied ‘Du bist meine Sonne!’ delivered as an ardent declaration of love rather than a New Year lollipop.

Together, Schukoff and Libor generate considerable voltage: listen to the scene 1 finale (disc 1, tr 9) from about 8'00" and feel the passion. Meanwhile Laura Scherwitzl and Ralf Simon provide exactly the brighter, lighter voices required for the show’s secondary romantic couple Anita and Pierrino (with enough charm to offset Scherwitzl’s occasionally wonky coloratura), while in the two roles of Giuditta’s luckless husband Manuele and the club-owner Professor Martini (no, seriously) Rupert Bergmann switches convincingly from heartbreak to humour.

Reservations? Well, I’m afraid it’s the usual case of CPO spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar: a track-listing that gives no indication of individual scenes, and no libretto or translation. For that, you’ll need Richard Bonynge’s sparkling but heavily cut English-language version on Telarc. Otherwise, this is a fine, affectionate recording: recommendable whether you’ve just discovered Lehár’s intoxicating final masterpiece or, like Octavio, you lost your heart to Giuditta a long time ago.