Curious fact: at one time Leoncavallo’s Zazà outstripped Pagliacci for popularity. It’s Milan premiere in 1900, conducted by Toscanini, was a major hit, putting its composer up there with Puccini as Italian opera’s great white hope. A perfect example of verismo – saving that no one is brutally murdered or jumps off a cliff – it remained in the repertoire for several decades before performances dwindled to a trickle and then pretty much stopped.

What was up? Leoncavallo, an odd fish, was certainly inept at self-promotion. Or did the Wagnerian declamatory style in his setting of the libretto upset Italian opera fans? For all its winning tunefulness, the score has a stubborn refusal to cohere into a show-stopping aria. Either way, as this superb new studio recording from Opera Rara reveals, the modern world has sorely misjudged Zazà.

The plot is simple. Good-time girl and cabaret artiste Zazà tumbles into relationship with posh gent who hangs around backstage. Too late she learns where he lives and finds he’s married, leading to confrontation and a husband’s brutal comparisons between “tawdry” mistress and “angelic” bourgeois wife. What a scumbag, eh?

Opera Rara’s cast is near faultless. Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho,...