It is a shame that this live recording of Werther comes to us as audio only. Although the Royal Opera’s production had little to commend it, there would have been a real gain from seeing Rolando Villazón onstage, throwing every fibre of his being into an intense portrayal of Werther as a loner struggling against his fate, as if he were being dragged down in an emotional whirlpool.

The performances marked Villazón’s return to opera in London after a long absence. This recording is unable to disguise that his voice has lost power and he has nothing at all left in reserve for the big moments, but every ounce of what remains is employed fearlessly to fire up the inferno in Werther’s tortured soul. His passion may have been expected but not perhaps the subtlety: it is impressive to hear so much soft singing live in the opera house and how conscientiously he shapes long phrases (try the broad arch at ‘Les étoiles et le soleil’, with only one breath, in the love duet). Tingling with nervous intensity, Villazón’s Werther is alive at every moment in the mind’s eye. With Wagner mezzo roles under her belt, Sophie Koch’s Charlotte rises to the big moments generously enough – and it is a pleasure to hear a native French speaker in the role – but her tone is sometimes hard, the character unengaging. Eri Nakamura makes a bright but not shrill Sophie and the young Norwegian baritone Audun Iversen as Albert is a singer to watch. Aside from Villazón, the strongest personality in the cast is Antonio Pappano, who gets detailed playing from the orchestra. This is Massenet with an Italianate cut but his sense of drama is second to none, rising to white heat at the climax of that fateful Christmas Eve meeting. The recording has a dry theatre ambience, without a lot of space around it, and the voices are not always as close as one would like.

A first choice for Werther on CD is tricky. What we really want is the authority of Thill and Vallin, mixed with a dash of Carreras’s romanticism, a soupçon of Kraus’s elegance, and suffused with the insights that Callas and Crespin brought to Charlotte’s arias. But we don’t have that; and in the meantime this live recording adds a distinctive voice of its own.