Only in her late 20s, Russian-born Aigul Akhmetshina has caused a considerable stir of late after what can only be described as a meteoric rise to near stardom that began when, as a Jette Parker Young Artist at Covent Garden, she appeared first of all in Peter Brook’s La tragédie de Carmen at Wilton’s Music Hall in 2017 before taking over the title-role in Bizet’s opera itself during the 2018 19 season. Since then, she has become the Carmen of choice in houses worldwide, including the New York Met, the Verona Arena, Covent Garden again (a new production by Damiano Michieletto) and Glyndebourne.

Now, following a much-publicised signing to Decca, we have her debut album, and a fine achievement it is in many ways. Carmen, inevitably, is integral to it, though the programme essentially summarises her career to date, as well as reminding us that there is more to her than Bizet’s heroine, effective though she unquestionably is as the latter. She gives us Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther and Romeo in Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, both of which she sang last year at Covent Garden and Salzburg respectively. La Cenerentola formed her professional debut at the Opéra de Baugé Festival in 2017, while ‘Una voce poco fa’ from Il barbiere di Siviglia recalls performances in Paris in 2022 and also with the Royal Opera, again last year.

She has a superb voice, no question, warm and even in tone, admirably agile, with a full, effortless top, and a tangy lower register. Texts, meanwhile, are insightfully projected without nudging or fracturing lines, which makes for a notably impressive performance of Carmen’s Card Scene, in which subtle dynamic shading gradually exposes dark forebodings as the long chromatic phrases unwind with an almost unnerving inexorability. The Séguedille is skittish, provoking a fierce reaction from Freddie de Tommaso, cast as her José, while the Habanera proves strikingly assertive: she’s less knowingly ironic here than Victoria de los Ángeles, less overtly sinuous than Leontyne Price, and ‘Prends garde à toi’ sounds as a warning as well as a jest. Omitting the preceding recitative (‘Quand je vous aimerai?’) was perhaps a mistake and leads to a sense of the scene being incomplete: there is certainly space on the disc to have included it.

Excellent though much of this is, however, the real revelations arguably come elsewhere. The Capuleti arias, in many ways the album’s high point, are outstandingly sung, the long-breathed lines superbly phrased, the coloratura exact and expressive, the interpolated high notes thrilling. ‘Nacqui all’affanno’, fractionally over-decorated for my taste, is all elegant dexterity and grace, while ‘Una voce poco fa’ is tellingly characterised: we’re aware of a steely determination beneath the wit, and when she sings ‘la vincerò’, we know her Rosina really means it. We need to hear more of her in this repertory, in Bellini above all.

The Letter Scene from Werther, meanwhile, has an almost furious intensity, its power enhanced by the emotional storm that Daniele Rustioni unleashes in the orchestra at this point. He and the RPO are on fine form throughout, always alert to drama and detail across an exacting stylistic range. ‘The Nightingale’, a traditional song from Akhmetshina’s native Bashkortostan, arranged by Kamil Rachimov (1900 78), forms an effective and beautiful encore, with its melismatic vocal line and plush orchestration. It all adds up to a fine recital, and a most auspicious debut.