This is an unhackneyed programme of songs from a young American soprano, the latest in a series called ‘Première Portraits’. The Petrarch Sonnets, composed in the late 1830s, are the ones that Liszt turned into the identically named set for piano, S158. ‘La farfalletta’, a three-stanza strophic canzoncina, was composed when Bellini was 12. The three Ariettas, from a set of six, are to words by the great 18th-century librettist Pietro Metastasio. ‘Per pietà, bell’idol mio’, with its move from minor to major, is slightly less anodyne than the other two.

Schubert wrote ‘Vedi quanto adoro’ as an exercise when he was studying with Salieri. In a scene from Metastasio’s Didone abbandonata, Dido begs Aeneas not to leave her; the setting is suitably agitated. Metastasio crops up yet again in the last two of the Vier Canzonen, which date from January 1820. Here the sources are, respectively, L’eroe cinese and Alessandro nell’Indie. The words of the first two are by one Jacopo Vittorelli; all four are simple, tuneful, quite unmemorable. Wagner wrote ‘Les adieux de Marie Stuart’ in March 1840, when he was living in Paris. Here Mary Queen of Scots bids a sad farewell to France, the ‘cradle of my happy childhood’. The music progresses from a lyrical opening to extravagant roulades, one of them on the word ‘que’.

Julie Davies sings artlessly or passionately, as appropriate, with a fearless top D flat in the first Petrarch Sonnet; Charles Spencer has one or two chances to shine in the occasional interlude or postlude. Unfortunately, they have not been well served by Capriccio. This is unfamiliar repertoire but there is no information on the music, and no texts or translations.