If your name is Aida, then soprano is a pretty savvy career path. Indeed, Decca is marketing Kazan-born Aida Garifullina simply by her first name on her debut album. However, Verdi’s Aida is definitely not part of the operatic landscape here. For someone marketed in the booklet as a lyric soprano, Garifullina tackles a lot of coloratura stuff, but does it very well.

A couple of French arias establish her coloratura credentials, including the Bell Song from Lakmé, which Garifullina sang, a tone down, as Lily Pons in the Florence Foster Jenkins film. She’s a good deal cleaner than Anna Moffo – an early role model – and she demonstrates plenty of fizz in Juliette’s Je veux vivre, which is giddy with excitement.

Most of the repertory here is Russian and it is undoubtedly Garifullina’s strength. She is carefree and vivacious in Snegurochka’s aria from Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden, a role she sings in Paris this spring, and moving in the lullaby from Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa. There’s seductive charm and gilded upper notes in the chromatic arabesques of the Queen of Shemakha’s ‘Hymn to the Sun’ from The Golden Cockerel – a role she learnt at Valery Gergiev’s request – and, like several sopranos before her, she winningly appropriates The Song of the Indian Merchant from tenors.

Of the 15 numbers here, only seven are operatic arias. The rest of the programme contains songs, of which Rachmaninov’s ‘Lilacs’ and ‘How fair this spot’ are particularly glorious, Garifullina revealing a gift for wistful Russian melancholy. But many are ladled with too much syrup in various orchestral arrangements. An exception to the gloop is the accompaniment to Midnight in Moscow which older listeners may recognise…it uses the Osipov State Russian Folk Orchestra as recorded on the 1962 Mercury disc ‘Balalaika Favourites’!