With the Basel Symphony on fine form, Bolton teases out Faure’s textural and emotional subtleties with great care, scrupulously judging both the delicate wit of Shylock and the altogether loftier mood of Caligula. The Balthasar Neumann Choir sound good in the latter: the tenor in Shylock is Benjamin Bruns, warm-toned and very ardent.

The real revelation for me here was the incidental music which Fauré composed for Alexandre Dumas père’s Caligula in 1889 – the emphasis is squarely upon the notorious Roman emperor’s taste for luxury and sensuality rather than his fabled brutality, and (once the Lohengrin-lite military fanfare of the opening has been despatched) the score has the soft-focus sheen of an early Hollywood blockbuster.