Hervé Niquet’s Carmen races out of the traps with bright, bracing, bristling period instrument bravura, brisk, propulsive tempi stoking up the energy and excitement to boiling point. Saturated with Spanish heat and martial pomp, it’s all quite exhilarating when it doesn’t, occasionally, feel a little exhausting.

Much of the adrenaline comes from its live recording in Opéra Royal du Château de Versailles, caught in embracingly direct sound by Manuel Mochino. It’s a satisfyingly charged reading for those who prefer their Carmens hot-blooded and passionate. Those of gentler dispositions will be reassured to know that Niquet, even so, maintains a largely secure control of the excitable proceedings, providing due emphasis on lyricism, colour and drama – the Entr’actes for Acts II and IV perfectly balletic, that for Act III as limpid as it is liquid – with crisp, clear, appropriately theatrical textures throughout.

But Carmen’s success rests or falls, of course, on Carmen. So particular interest lies in the debut as the titular sultry seductress of the enveloping dark-velvet mezzo...