Mozart once wrote to his father that an aria should ‘fit a singer like a perfectly tailored suit of clothes’. The scenas and arias he composed for his friends and colleagues, including his first love, Aloysia Weber, bear him out. Three of the numbers in Cuban-American soprano Lisette Oropesa’s imaginatively planned debut recital were designed to display Aloysia’s agility and what a contemporary dubbed her ‘extraordinary upper range’. Oropesa’s coloratura flights have all the scintillating precision one could wish for in the vocal concerto Ah se in ciel, benigne stelle. Here and in the other two solos for Aloysia, Non so d’onde viene, with its sensuous woodwind colouring, and Vorrei spiegarvi, Oropesa spins a refined legato line and effortlessly negotiates Mozart’s vertiginous leaps and plunges. She musters a true trill, a must-have for any self-respecting 18th-century singer; and singing with a care for the sound and meaning of the Italian texts, she responds keenly to character and dramatic situation, whether in the muted sorrow of Non so d’onde viene or the mingled agitation and tenderness of Vorrei spiegarvi, with its exquisite duetting between voice and oboe.

Unlike Aloysia, whose voice was reportedly small, Oropesa combines high-wire coloratura brilliance with a lyric fullness and depth (her roles include Violetta and Lucia di Lammermoor). Her mix of purity and warmth is ideally suited to the two magnificent scenas Mozart wrote for his Prague friend Josepha Duschek: Ah, lo previdi, K272, whose impassioned opening aria brings out a dark flame in Oropesa’s tone, and Bella mia fiamma, sung with yearning sensuality – perfect tuning, too, in the tortuous chromaticisms that Mozart allegedly wrote, tongue-in-cheek, to challenge Duschek’s sight-reading skills.

Another Mozart singer celebrated here is Luisa Villeneuve, first Dorabella in Così fan tutte and admired for her lively singing and acting, and her physical allure. Oropesa vividly catches the note of amorous confusion in both Vado, ma dove? and Chi sà, chi sà, qual sia, with its mellow colouring for clarinets and bassoons. Elsewhere she soars joyously into the stratosphere in an early ‘homage’ aria for the Salzburg Prince-Archbishop, and nicely judges the sarcastic mockery of Voi avete un cor fedele, the sole comic number here.

Two, minor, frustrations are the slightly backward balancing of the trim period band (a word of special praise for the first oboe) and Oropesa’s reluctance to add embellishments in slower arias. She might have taken a cue from Mozart’s own ornamented version of Non so d’onde viene. But Oropesa’s vocal finesse and dramatic insight make this a debut recital of rare pedigree. There’s an excellent booklet, too, with texts, literate translations, and notes from John A Rice that tell you all you need to know about the background and context of these inspired showpieces.