First performed at the Paris Opéra in 1883, Henry VIII was one of the works, along with Étienne Marcel (1879) and Ascanio (1890), with which Saint-Saëns sought to re establish French grand opéra as a form capable of countering the prevailing Wagnerism he had come to distrust. Based on Calderón’s La cisma de Inglaterra (‘The Schism in England’) and Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, it dramatises the collapse of the King’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, his growing obsession with Anne Boleyn and his establishment of the Church of England, before culminating in a cliffhanger ending in which Henry becomes convinced of Anne’s betrayal precisely at the moment of Catherine’s death.

The narrative, however, is by no means historically accurate. Wolsey is conspicuous by his absence, and the Reformation is presented as a popular uprising against papal influence. Anne, meanwhile, is haunted by a past relationship, not with an English nobleman but a Spanish diplomat, Gomez de Feria, once her lover in France, now ambassador to Henry’s court: one of her letters to him is now in Catherine’s possession, and the plot partly hangs upon whether the Queen, the tragic protagonist whose actions dictate the opera’s moral compass, will reveal both its existence and contents.

Like many works written for the Opéra, its textual history is complex, with substantial cuts imposed before the premiere and further excisions made during the initial run to produce the standard score that has formed the basis of its subsequent revivals. For this new recording, however, Odyssey Opera use an Urtext edition by Hugh Macdonald, which restores all the omitted material, including the big septet at the close of Act 2, a magnificent if recriminatory duet for Anne and Gomez in the same act, and the later confrontation between the angry King and the Papal Legate, Catherine’s defender, a scene over which the Philip/Inquisitor duet from Don Carlos inevitably looms large.

The performance is engrossing, if uneven. Gil Rose conducts with a measured inexorability that grips from start to finish. The playing is excellent, nowhere more so than in the great march that ushers in the Synod scene, while the chorus, though fractionally too few in number, are consistently strong. Some of the cast, however, take time to get into their stride, a drawback of recording live at a single performance. Gomez is saddled, Radamès-like, with having to sing his main aria within minutes of curtain up, and Yeghishe Manucharyan’s upper registers only settle when he is way beyond it. Hilary Ginther’s dark-voiced Anne similarly takes a while to strike form, but is splendid by the time we reach the restored duet with Manucharyan, where she’s simply thrilling.

No one, though, could have any qualms about Michael Chioldi’s Henry or Ellie Dehn’s Catherine. He gives us a wonderfully sung, complex portrait of an experienced politician in the grip of desire, icily self-controlled in public, but in private capable of turning in a flash from seductive charm to emotional violence. Dehn sounds ravishing throughout and is equally convincing as a woman determined to preserve her integrity in the face of every provocation that her enemies can throw at her. The recording itself is admirably clear: only the final applause reminds us it was made live. The accompanying booklet, however, regrettably omits the texts of some of Macdonald’s restorations. Despite its flaws, it’s an important issue and a major addition to the Saint Saëns discography.