As WS Gilbert might have said, Elisabeth Söderström was the very model of a modern prima donna. Her repertoire embraced all styles and languages, bringing richness to what must have been a very fulfilling career. On this disc of extracts from live performances in her native Sweden we get a good idea of the breadth of her musical interests, though not so much her linguistic abilities, as most of the tracks are sung in Swedish translation (the operas include Mozart’s Figaro’s bröllop, always a source of amusement to non-Swedes).

The earliest track dates from 1952 and finds the singer tripping lightly along the top line of the quartet from Martha with Nicolai Gedda as her Lyonel. Then there is a jump to the 1960s and the mature Söderström emerges – a sensitive Susanna in Figaro, expansively paced by Colin Davis; a vivid Fiordiligi, bristling with outrage in ‘Come scoglio’; and a Marschallin who sings her monologue in Act 1 of Der Rosenkavalier with a gloomy inward intensity that is quite chilling. How determined Söderström was to get beneath the skin of the music. The performances are alive with an intellectual energy that has no patience with merely passive vocal beauty.

I am not sure that a Swedish-language version of Ravel’s Shéhérazade is one I would return to, and Söderström does not really ‘do’ languorous sensuality, but it is a gripping performance. Her Puccini is unexpectedly outgoing, the 1977 Suor Angelica (the latest of the recordings) better than her un-Italianate Manon Lescaut; the Busoni and Berwald extracts are big scenes envisioned on a scale to match. Only her rather unlovable Eva in Die Meistersinger (the booklet calls her portrayal ‘fresh and rebellious’) fails to convince. There is no room on this disc for her Janácek or Britten or any further 20th-century roles. That leaves plenty of scope for Bluebell to follow up with a Volume 2.