It’s easy to understand why an Australian CD label that is named after that country’s first great opera singer should want to issue the first ever recording of a work composed for the diva herself. Nellie Melba commissioned Saint-Saëns to write Hélène as a showcase for her in 1904. She got what it said on the label – a one-act poème lyrique based on an anodyne version of the story of Helen of Troy... The dramatic cantata Nuit Persane, a reworking of an earlier song cycle, is [...] convincing and full of gorgeously coloured orchestral writing, and the singers, lead by soprano Rosamund Illing and tenor Steve Davislim, do both works proud.