It’s not long since Anna Netrebko’s ‘Verismo’ appeared (DG, 10/16), and Angela Gheorghiu has just announced a return to the studio for Warner Classics to produce a disc focused on the same post-Verdian corner of the repertoire. Here, though, is a ‘Verismo’ album from a star who, though not quite occupying the same lofty realms of the operatic galaxy, can give any of today’s top divas a run for their money. Krassimira Stoyanova is a stalwart of many of the world’s great opera stages (a recent Salzburg Marschallin and Danae, for example, and Muti’s latest Desdemona on disc) and a singer of real quality.

The voice itself is not the most yielding or flexible instrument, and Stoyanova is maybe rather too equable in terms of temperament: tragic vulnerability, vengeful fury or last-minute leaps from battlements do not, one suspects, come naturally to her. But it’s a bright and powerful sound – less rich and plummy than Netrebko, a great deal steelier than Gheorghiu – and is under total technical control.

You’ll have to go some way to find a more robustly sung ‘Vissi d’arte’ or ‘Un bel dì’ than we have here, for example, and she conveys a real grandeur throughout. The slow-burn intensity she brings to Adriana Lecouvreur’s ‘Poveri fiori’, La Wally’s famous aria or ‘La mamma morta’ is impressive. But the highlight is probably the extended 14-minute extract from Mascagni’s rarely heard Lodeletta, a well-written scene, movingly performed here.

There are the usual gripes about recital discs such as these, including some rather abrupt endings to numbers and slightly bland accompaniments. Orfeo’s cover is a bit of a design disaster, too, and it’s a shame we have only summaries of what each of the arias is about rather than full texts. But Stoyanova is a very impressive singer, and this is another commanding (and well-recorded) recital to add to the clutch already available on this label.