Maybe some readers will ask “Lionel who?” Monckton’s name has not been much bandied about in recent decades. One of the handful of successful musical-theatre composers in London in the 1890s and 1900s, his music continued to be played and sung well into the 1960s. A few of his shows were revived, The Arcadians (1909) in particular becoming a favourite with amateur societies, but none of them was ever given another West End run. This was because the subjects were essentially topical, and each piece tailored to the talents of particular actors. As Andrew Lamb writes in the booklet, “they featured contemporary settings, fashionable dresses and exotic locations”.

Monckton’s wife, Gertie Millar, was a soubrette with a featherweight voice and an infectious chuckle. The title-role in Our Miss Gibbs was her greatest success, and “Moonstruck” (“I’m such a silly when the moon comes out”) brings the CD to a rollicking finish. Monckton, though, also composed for singers with voices of near-operatic quality, among them Evie Greene (the first Nan in A Country Girl), Florence Smithson the heroine of The Mousmé and Phyllis Dare the original Eileen in The Arcadians. Catherine Bott hints at the Devonshire accent in “Try again, Johnnie” but is less successful when it comes to the Yorkshire lilt required for “Mary”. It is in the songs written for Ellaline Terriss that she achieves some of the best results, above all in the slightly shocking “The sly cigarette” from A Runaway Girl, in which the convent girl declares that of all joys “the best of all is smoking”. What a pleasure to hear “Maisie”, the song made famous by Rosie Boote in The Messenger Boy. Richard Suart joins Bott in the glorious “Two little sausages” and brings all his G&S experience to bear on “When I marry Amelia” and “Beautiful bountiful Bertie”.

It is hard for modern, classically trained singers to hit off the vaudevillian timing, playing with the rhythms; nevertheless both Bott and Suart demonstrate a natural aptitude for the material. Ronald Corp conducts the New London Orchestra and Light Opera Chorus with obvious affection. Listening to this CD made me feel ridiculously happy.