One of music’s great survivors, Luigi Cherubini was born in Florence in 1760. After early successes in Italy, he travelled to Paris in 1785 where he was presented to Marie Antoinette and commissioned to write his first opera to a French libretto. A popular figure in musical life, he spent the rest of his life in France, going on to run the Paris Conservatory where, with his conservative tastes, he became the bane of the young Hector Berlioz. Cherubini died in 1842, a grand old man of French music.

Cherubini Les Abencérages

Although he composed around 35 stage works between 1773 and 1833, only Medea (originally the French-language Medée) lives on in the repertoire today. A pity, as a fair few of his operas deserve to be heard. Les Abencérages, ou L’étendard de Grenade (The Abencerrages, or The Standard of Granada) premiered in Paris in 1813 with an enthusiastic Napoleon in the audience. It has popped up now and again (Giulini conducted an Italian version in a live recording from 1956), but this is its first studio recording, and it’s a...