Under Christie, overtures and dances are terse, with tense articulation and precise meter. While carefully shaping soloists’ ensembles, Christie gives tenor Marcel Beekman, cross-dressed in the title role, the latitude needed to nail his part. Beekman is riveting, his outrageous vocalism creating a Platée who is ludicrous yet sympathetic.

Thank goodness it has been captured! Christie’s conducting is masterly, totally in command of the idiom, faultless in dramatic timing and pacing, encouraging of vivid and colourful characterisation from his singers, and easily ticking off the score’s comic tricks.