Zarzuela remains a source of joy and amazement. How could a composer possibly come up with such a sequence of wonderful melodies, irrepressibly tumbling out one after another, as Jerónimo Giménez does in the ‘Intermedio’ from La boda de Luis Alonso?

Zarzuela is described as Spanish operetta, but it ranges far wider than that. Certainly there’s something of Sullivan in the chorus of seamstresses sewing shirts and dreaming of the guardsmen who will wear them in Barbieri’s El barberillo de Lavapiés. Gilbert, though, never dreamed up the idea of a chorus of doctors examining a dog for rabies as in the item from Chapí’s El rey que rabió. Nor did Offenbach ever quite manage the rhythmic vitality and effervescence of the seguidillas from Chueca’s El chaleco blanco, in which the laundresses of Madrid wash clothes in the River Manzanares. And how often in operetta does one find such grace and beauty as in the chorus for courting lovers from Soutullo’s La del soto del parral? Even Lehár, for all his love of local instrumental colour, never dared serve up an atmospheric tone poem such as the Act 2 prelude with txistu (Basque flute) solo from El caserío by the Basque composer Guridi.

That it’s not just the perennial favourites included here further demonstrates the riches of the genre. The English notes contain too many translation howlers; but the performances are all one might expect from native performers under the Teatro de la Zarzuela’s musical director. At the price can one possibly resist it?