Méhul: Uthal CD review – crisp and classy French comic opera

Deshayes/Beuron/Bou/Les Talens Lyriques/Choeur de Chambre de Namur/Rousset
(Palazzetto Bru Zane/Ediciones Singulares)Palazzetto Bru Zane’s exhumation of 19th-century operas continues with Uthal by Étienne-Nicolas Méhul, a leading composer in post-Revolution France getting renewed attention on the 200th anniversary of his death. Composed in 1806 for Paris’s Opéra Comique, it’s only an hour long, and a quarter of that is dialogue, delivered here in suitably m