“The cages are opened. The lions are about to attack.” This is the end of Donizetti’s 1840 opera Les Martyrs , the latest forgotten work to be given careful exhumation by the record company Opera Rara and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; the CD is due next spring. And those stage directions sum up one contradiction of giving works like this in concert: the original audience came for the spectacle as much as the music. We didn’t actually get to see any martyrs torn limb from limb – even if some might have wished that on the TV persona of Wynne Evans, the Go Compare tenor, here singing with some style in the supporting role of the Christian leader. Nor did we get to see any pagan sacrifice, nor a ballet of dancing gladiators.

We did, however, hear a great deal, and not only because Les Martyrs is gargantuan in length. Galvanised by the energy of Mark Elder’s conducting, the OAE, on excellent form, did much to fill in the visual gaps. We got the sense of Donizetti skilfully and exuberantly throwing everything he had at this, his first Paris Opera commission, from the tender introduction played by not two, not three, but four bassoons to the grand set-piece ensembles, choral and instrumental, which came complete with two harps, ophicleide, extra offstage brass and sometimes even a gong.

Michael Spyres was in gloriously incisive voice as the heroic convert Polyeucte; the ridiculously high showstopping note in his big Act 3 aria would have had 19th-century Paris at his feet. Joyce El-Khoury’s Pauline was almost as impressive, sung in a big, glinting, mettlesome soprano that gained in focus to meet all the role’s demands. Perhaps it was a shame not to have more French speakers in the cast, but with the lineup of voices also including David Kempster’s burly yet elegant baritone and the cavernous, distinctive basses of Brindley Sherratt and Clive Bayley, that wasn’t much of a drawback.