The sonorous bass-baritone of Ildebrando d’Arcangelo, with its oaken middle register and ringing top notes, is certainly an impressive instrument. Yet shorn of his magnetic stage presence, his singing often lacks both “face” and elegance of style. Best are Leporello’s Catalogue Aria, sung with lubricious relish if no great variety, and Figaro’s embittered tirade against the female sex. But his gruff, graceless accounts of “Se vuol ballare” and “Non più andrai” miss any sense of ironic mockery; Don Giovanni’s serenade is dull and forthright; and while he brings a fair swagger to the first part of Guglielmo’s over-the-top showpiece “Rivolgete”, there is no change of tone, no gleeful amusement, after the two girls have stomped off in indignation.

In the four concert arias, d’Arcangelo’s fine, firm resonance rarely compensates for a lack of engagement with the characters’ plights. The text of “Mentre ti lascio” speaks of grief and terror, though you would never suspect so from d’Arcangelo’s sober, unvaried singing. In the two out-and-out bass arias, “Non so d’onde viene” and “Per questa bella mano”, he is tested both by the low notes and the bouts of coloratura, vaguely sketched rather than precisely articulated. It is partly Mozart’s fault that “Per questa bella mano” tends to sound lugubrious rather than, as the text invites, playfully amorous; and the double bass obbligato can’t help seeming faintly grotesque on the larger, more unwieldy modern instrument. That said, the accompaniments throughout this recital are uninspiring: solid and string-heavy, with woodwind and horns missing far too many tricks in Mozart’s chuckling, subversive commentaries.