As Delos’s gushing booklet note makes clear, this new release of Bellini’s swansong is focused around its two American leads, the soprano Sarah Coburn and, especially, the tenor Lawrence Brownlee. Recorded back in 2017 in Kaunas, it sees the pair join Constantine Orbelian (a Delos stalwart) and his orchestra and chorus alongside a largely Lithuanian cast – the somewhat dull-toned baritone Azamat Zheltyrguzov is the exception, hailing from Kazakhstan.

For their part, Brownlee and Coburn turn in enjoyable, technically superb performances. The tenor, his skills honed in the stratospheric realms of the earlier bel canto repertoire, is probably the most effortless Arturo on disc since Pavarotti (on Decca’s starry 1973 set). Every phrase is elegantly turned, the intonation is impeccable and the timbre – sweet, bright and breezy, if occasionally a little tight – is smooth across the registers.

His ‘A te, o cara’ provides a masterclass in vocal control, while I don’t think anyone else has been more successful in nailing that infamous top F at the end of Act 3 (at 5'00" on the set’s penultimate track) – where Pavarotti goes full falsetto, Brownlee offers a much more convincing and thrilling blend, with plenty of chest voice mixed in. The price of such security, though, comes in a certain lack of dramatic urgency and tonal variety, not to mention the basic size of the voice, smaller and less rich than Brownlee’s starry predecessor (and less exciting, if we go back even further, than the irresistibly urgent Giuseppe Di Stefano, opposite Callas).

Coburn is similarly impressive as a stylist, possessing a clean voice with an occasional appealing light vibrato and a slight tang. She has all the notes and plenty of agility to get around the coloratura, and is often affecting, especially in Act 2’s mad scene, even if the true pathos of the role eludes her – at least when compared to other great performers of the role. Both she and Brownlee are dramatically on the cool side but they rustle up some urgency in their Act 3 duet (without its central Andante, cut by Bellini after the Paris premiere, and reinstated on the Bonynge recording).

Both singers offer fine performances, then, and certainly deserve better than Orbelian’s stolid and unimaginative support, not to mention Delos’s sparkle-free engineering. The orchestral playing is workmanlike, the choral singing lacking in focus and force, and the conductor lets Bellini’s accompaniments amble along without injecting the sort of spring and drama they need: no one sounds especially happy during the happy ending, for example, and there’s hardly any sense of anything being at stake in Riccardo and Giorgio’s Act 2 duet.

Zheltyrguzov must take some of the blame there, and the baritone is disappointing as Riccardo; there’s a great deal to like, though, from Tadas Girininkas’s resonant, rounded Giorgio. The rest of the cast is decent. In sum, although fans of the lead singers here are unlikely to be disappointed, this otherwise isn’t a set to dislodge any current recommendations.