No conductor working in the recording studios in the 1960s and beyond did more than Richard Bonynge to recover the sound of the 19thcentury ballet, especially in its home of the Paris Opéra-Comique. A central figure in that culture was Adolphe Adam, who supplied vaudevilles, ballets, pastiches and comic operas over the course of three prolific decades. He wrote with extraordinary facility, producing his balletic masterpiece Giselle in three weeks, and creating up to six new shows in a single year for the insatiable Parisian public. With two recordings of Giselle and a critically acclaimed recording of the opera Le Toréador, Bonynge has been Adam’s most distinguished modern advocate on records: Eloquence has also reissued his 1990 recording of Le Corsaire (482 8605), Adam’s final ballet score before his early death from a heart attack, aged just 52, in 1856. This new compilation includes the overture from Le Toréador as one of the substantial bonus items to a little known two-act ballet, Le Diable à quatre. ‘Lots of pretty tunes and um-cha accompaniments nicely played and well recorded.’ Gramophone, November 1965 (Le Diable à quatre) ‘Richard Bonynge’s ability to persuade Decca to record out-of-the-way 19th-century French stage works has been to our repeated benefit over the past 40 years. Yet few of the results have been more welcome than this delightful operatic soufflé.’ Gramophone, April 1998 (Le Toréador)