You won’t get far into the plot of Auber’s 1831 ‘petit opéra’ Le philtre without a faint sensation of déjà vu. A rural setting, a lovelorn lad, a proud beauty and a quack doctor: if it all feels curiously familiar, that’s because a philtre is a potion – specifically, an elixir of love. Yes, Le philtre joins Paisiello’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and Leoncavallo’s La bohème on the list of operas that have been comprehensively eclipsed by other composers’ treatments of the same subject. It’s most unfair: Auber and his librettist Scribe got there first (Donizetti piggybacked on their success a year later), and it’s easy to hear why Le philtre delighted its first audiences, running for 243 performances at the Paris Opéra.

But anyway, we are where we are, and most opera lovers will doubtless be amused to encounter Nemorino, Adina, Belcore and Dr Dulcamara in their original incarnations as Guillaume, Térézine, Joli-Coeur and Fontanarose. Le philtre lacks the pathos of L’elisir d’amore (and there’s no take-home tune on a par with ‘Una furtiva lagrima’) but then, it’s a different kind of piece. Auber and Scribe set out to create a distinctly Gallic pastoral comedy and contemporary critics drew parallels with Rousseau’s then-popular Le devin du village. If it’s possible to understand why Le philtre was overshadowed by its Italian imitator, it still comes as a surprise to realise that this is (as far as I can ascertain) its first full length recording.

Luciano Acocella and his Polish orchestra and chorus make a perfectly enjoyable job of it. The recording appears to have been taken from live performances at the Rossini in Wildbad festival: a smallish-sounding audience applauds at the end of each act but is otherwise unobtrusive. Its principal weakness is the acoustic: orchestral and (particularly) choral sound is confined and congested, sounding muddy in big ensemble climaxes and occasionally giving a raucous edge to the orchestra’s very Slavic-sounding woodwind section. A libretto can be downloaded but there is no English translation.

Set against those shortcomings is an engaging and fresh-sounding cast. Sopranos Luiza Fatyol and Adina Vilichi each have the requisite sweetness and sparkle, with Fatyol bringing a wholly appropriate hint of tartness to her characterisation of Térézine (a more worldly heroine than Donizetti’s Adina). Eugenio Di Lieto is amusingly droll as the quack Fontanarose, while Emmanuel Franco swaggers nicely as the soldier Joli Coeur. Crucially, they can all shape a melody with natural lyricism: a quality particularly noticeable in Patrick Kabongo’s Guillaume. Kabongo isn’t a high-octane tenor but the unforced directness of his singing is well suited to the naivety and ardour of his character. It’s a touching and likeable performance.

Acocella is a shrewd judge of tempo and balance: Le philtre is more about wit and charm than the headlong comic fizz of a Rossini or a Donizetti, and this account bubbles along nicely. I can imagine more polished performances (and heaven knows, Auber is under-served on record), but in the meantime, this recording at least lets you discover an opera that grows ever more charming with successive hearings. There’s even a reference to Tristan and Yseult, and a magical woodwind passage after Guillaume drinks the philtre that might, briefly, make you wonder if Wagner knew this score. Is that a leap too far? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t decide for yourself.