Audiences in the UK will have had limited opportunities to see George Gagnidze perform. There was a minor role in a BBC Proms Khovanshchina in 2017 and, in January 2020, a single Germont at Covent Garden, stepping in for Simon Keenlyside. The Georgian baritone is still a familiar face, though, best known for his appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, many of them beamed into cinemas worldwide. His programme on this Orfeo album is mostly Verdi but with a sprinkling of verismo, Wagner and the briefest of Mozartian champagne cork pops.

Gagnidze’s is a burly baritone, and its heft works best in the two verismo numbers, the Pagliacci Prologue and Gérard’s ‘Nemico della patria?’ from Andrea Chénier, dispatched with satisfyingly refulgent tone. It’s more of a handicap in Verdi, though. Gagnidze is not an insensitive performer by any means but when he tries to sing more softly, there’s a grittiness to his tone. In Verdi’s long legato lines his breath sometimes runs short and one senses the effort required in music that needs to sound, well, effortless. He is not helped by conductor Stefan Solyom, whose tempos at the head of the Staatskapelle Weimar verge on the leaden, Germont’s ‘Di Provenza il mar’ very nearly grinding to a complete stop. Nabucco’s prayer ‘Dio di Giuda’ is another tortuously slow performance, stretching Gagnidze to the limit, a pronounced beat evident in his voice.

Listen to Ludovic Tézier’s recent Award winning all-Verdi programme (Sony, 5/21) and you hear what is missing: seamless legato, a splendid sense of style and dramatic recitatives delivered by a singer completely inside his roles. Orfeo gives Gagnidze’s Conte di Luna no Ferrando as comprimario support in the recit leading up to ‘Il balen’ and, strangely, Posa only gets his death scene from Don Carlo, quite histrionic here, and is denied the aria ‘Per me giunto e il di supremo’ that precedes it.

Wolfram’s Song to the Evening Star from Tannhäuser sounds effortful at Solyom’s crawl but there’s a neat spring to their step in a bullish ‘Fin ch’han dal vino’ from Don Giovanni, an unexpected role for Gagnidze, perhaps. This might have been a different story with more idiomatic conducting, but as a calling card it’s unlikely to persuade many casting directors that Gagnidze is anything beyond a dependable verismo baritone.