The discovery of a lost Puccini song might prompt shrugs from those who don’t know the composer actually wrote any. In fact, the master of Italian opera wrote 20 or so, sometimes recycling the music to better effect for later major works. The premiere recording of ‘Melanconia’ (‘Melancholy’), though, is a miniature manifesto of the composer’s artistic sensibility. Writing in 1883 to a text by Antonio Ghislanzoni, the 25-year-old composer created a loose musical construction rather than adhering to any traditional song models to create an unfolding narrative out of words that visually describe the world after the poet’s death. The artistic potential might seem limited, but even at that age the composer’s creative dialogues with death were well on the way to bringing new theatrical veracity to this well-worn operatic device. Also, ‘Melanconia’ never meanders and reaches a conclusion that is both emotionally and musically satisfying. The disc is arranged roughly in chronological order, from 1875 to 1917, and then at the end returns to 1883 (a year that yielded the biggest concentration of song) for ‘Melanconia’, a conclusion that offers gravity and aesthetic perspective about Puccini’s in-born talent and artistic progression.

To me, the songs are best heard for what they are than for what the music later became, often blooming in their middle section when the composer finds the heart of what attracted him to the verse. That said, the 1883 ‘Mentia l’avviso’ (‘It was a false alarm’) is at its best in a longish piano prelude before plunging into melodramatic rhetoric. The core message becomes more distilled so that by the 1902 ‘Terra e mare’ (‘Earth and sea’), Puccini delivers a major song with French harmonic influence and highly poetic word-painting. Most charming of all is the 1908 ‘Casa mia, casa mia’ (‘Home, sweet home’), written as the composer was selling one of his homes, with only three lines of verse and a 46-second duration. Has a real estate deal ever inspired anything so lovable?

This album shows every sign of being a deep-commitment project for Angela Gheorghiu: besides writing her own considered, heartfelt booklet notes, she braves the microphones in a less-than-flattering vocal state, never seeming to navigate around her strengths and weaknesses but delivering every song with an interpretative conviction that goes beyond matters of voice. Pitch is iffy and climactic notes go haywire but the Gheorghiu charisma, at the age of 58, is palpable in her tone and long-cultivated Puccinian style, especially in her beautifully moulded quiet endings. It helps that the engineering keeps microphones at a respectful distance. But even when unwieldy vocal moments get in the way of some of the more modest songs, she claims ownership over everything she sings here. And that includes some of the more curious selections, such as the patriotic, broad-strokes ‘Inno a Roma’ (‘Hymn to Rome’), in which Gheorghiu and pianist Vincenzo Scalera (a major plus here) allow no ironic distance between content and performance.

In the Puccini song discography, Gheorghiu’s selected 17 songs are preferable to Krassimira Stoyanova and Maria Prinz with a larger selection of 19 (no ‘Melanconia’) but done in a more generalised ultra-operatic approach. Many great divas have late recordings that need explaining. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf pre-emptively titled her last album ‘To My Friends’ and meant it literally. But Gheorghiu’s disc is for Puccini’s friends as well.