The young Swedish soprano Maria Bengtsson certainly has credentials as a lyric soprano, with a series of appearances at high-profile opera houses, particularly in Vienna and Berlin. Her soprano sounds small-scale, possibly leading you to think of her as more of a Susanna than a Countess. However, it is the Countess she sings in Figaro. In Der Rosenkavalier, she sings the Marschallin rather than Sophie. This disc of Mozart arias – unimaginatively selected beyond four excerpts from Idomeneo – doesn’t always present her in the strongest light.

Bengtsson’s singing is poised and polished, but the voice becomes thin and colourless at the top and there’s a sense that it’s under-nourished, even when supported by the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra employing spry period manners under Bertrand de Billy. She is at her best as the lamenting Ilia, slightly breathless in recitative, and in the Countess’s ‘Dove sono’, where she floats pianissimos tenderly.

Her Donna Anna lacks the necessary firepower and Fiordiligi’s ‘Come scoglio’ from Così fan tutte is a real disappointment, demonstrating a hollow lower register and finding Bengtsson slamming on the brakes to deal with the coloratura. Her diction is good, yet there is little variation in character presented here, despite her having sung all these roles on stage. Her Pamina, for instance, spins notes effectively, but you’d have little idea of the character’s torment from this performance.

MDG’s booklet contains a biography and descriptions of what is happening in each scene, but there are no aria texts.