Aunt Caroline is dead, and the three nieces who shunned her during her career as a grande horizontale are suddenly very interested indeed in the 40 million francs that she accrued while plying her venerable (if not entirely respectable) trade. But her will contains a catch: the fortune will go to the first child that they can produce between them, and if there’s no heir within 12 months the whole lot will go to charity. French operetta is no genre for prudes, but even so: asked to guess the composer of a screwball farce about prostitution, infertility and illegitimate babies, I doubt many of us would plump for the 68-year-old Albert Roussel.

No one quite believed it at the time (1933) either. Le testament de la tante Caroline had to wait four years to be heard in France, and contemporary operetta composers such as Maurice Yvain were withering about a ‘serious’ composer presuming to think he could have a popular hit without a single knockout tune. This premiere recording uses a shortened, one-act version created after the composer’s death, and it’s hard to know just how much of a loss that represents. The music we get here is delicious: waltz songs, comic duets and mock-tragic choruses, very much in the warm-hearted, bittersweet tradition of Messager or Hahn but filtered through a cool, subtle orchestral palate that is – despite everything – unmistakably Roussel.

The results are a bit like streamlined Chabrier, and this is a delightful and distinctive addition to the catalogue. The live recording offers benefits (an infectious theatrical energy and immediacy) as well as problems (the orchestral balance favours the brass and bass). Ça va: one takes the rough with the smooth with operetta recordings, and nothing about the musical side of things should deter you. The cast is lively and the singing has that idiomatically Gallic combination of sensuality and tartness, most evident when Marie Perbost and Fabien Hyon are singing together as Aunt Caroline’s maid and chauffeur respectively. Most of the numbers are ensembles, and these are the only two characters who emerge strongly as individuals – for which Roussel, of course, has to take some of the blame.

But not all of it. No libretto or translation is provided, either in print or online, and the desultory synopsis in the booklet fails even to mention several of the characters listed in the cast. You’ll just have to guess who they are and what they get up to. And you might need to brush up your French, too; the spoken dialogue is included in its entirety, comprising more than 30 minutes of the 79 minute running time. Utterly frustrating for non Francophones: if copyright issues prevented reprinting of the text, a properly detailed synopsis, with cued track-listings, should have been provided. For that reason I can give only a grudging welcome to what ought to have been a really enjoyable rediscovery.