Here’s a Cavalleria rusticana with a difference. Not only do Thomas Hengelbrock and his Balthasar Neumann forces offer historically informed performances – the orchestra plays on gut strings – but they present Mascagni’s breakthrough one-acter uncut and with its original tonal scheme largely restored.

A detailed booklet essay explains what’s been reinstated, as well as the reasons for the original cuts being made ahead of the premiere. The most significant of these involved saving the shoddy chorus of the Teatro Costanzi its blushes, and doing away with complex and demanding passages in a third verse for Alfio’s aria and in the Easter Hymn. Granted, these cuts rob us of some ingenious writing by Mascagni, but also – along with other cuts ‘tightening the pace’ – help keep the dramatic focus. Listeners will have to make up their own minds. One should certainly welcome the fact that this release gives us the opportunity to do so.

But this is a great deal more than just an exercise in musicological excavation: here’s a persuasive performance that is refreshing and revealing in the best ‘authentic’ tradition. The orchestral sound is supple and airy, while the choral singing – by turns classy, seductive and delicate – not only makes a strong case for the cut music but creates a musical world of far greater subtlety than we’re used to in this score.

Hengelbrock’s great achievement is that the primary colours of the drama still shine through within this subtler tonal palette, with no loss in urgency. The singers – all new to me – are of a piece with the conception, too. Carolina López Moreno has little of the vocal richness of many a great Santuzza of the past but sings with passion and humanity. It’s a similar case with Giorgio Berrugi’s intelligent Turiddu – a character more sympathetic here than often. Domen KriŽaj is a fine, handsome-sounding Alfio.

With good sound – recorded live at the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden – and with Prospero’s excellent documentation, this release can be heartily recommended to anyone wanting a fresh perspective on this work, or on verismo opera in general.