This is a considerable addition to this ever-enterprising artist’s growing discography. Just when many of us were declaring there would never be anyone to take on Renata Tebaldi’s mantle in spinto roles, here’s Angela Gheorghiu doing just that. There is a similar strength of tone, breadth of phrasing and attention to musical and verbal detail. Everything she achieves here is technically assured, thought through and emotionally rewarding.

Spurning EMI’s chosen order, I played the arias in the order of their composition, a much preferable sequence. The piece from Le villi is a bit desultory, but Fidelia’s two arias from Edgar reveal Puccini already adept at writing for his heroine; Gheorghiu sings them both with the freshness and warmth they require. In the extracts from Manon Lescaut, she nicely contrasts the young, bored girl of ‘In quelle trine morbide’, very much rivalling Tebaldi in a piece she recorded early in her career, with the tragic import called for by ‘Sola, perduta, abbandonata’.

Her Mimì in Decca’s La bohème (A/99) was an appealing, cleanly articulated reading, and it still is, even if the youthful bloom isn’t quite so much in evidence. Musetta, though, is now very much her role, her Waltz Song sung with zest adding to the fullness which only a few others have brought to the piece. One can hear why EMI wanted ‘Un bel dì vedremo’ at its top: Gheorghiu’s account is overwhelming, as is the death scene, again recalling Tebaldi. She is almost as moving in Suor Angelica’s ‘Senza mamma’, though here Scotto’s aching tones aren’t quite found. Magda’s solo and ‘O mio babbino caro’ are as smiling and therefore as winning as they should be.

From Turandot, Liù’s pains and sorrows are encompassed with ease and an apt morbidezza, with finely poised pianissimo high notes. I thought might I have reservations about ‘In questa reggia’. I needn’t have worried. Gheorghiu, who once told me she could sing any and everything, is a very womanly, vulnerable Princess, along the lines of that presented by Callas in her complete set, but the Romanian diva’s singing is steadier, the climaxes, with their high As and Bs, each taken in a single breath. Roberto Alagna, brought in briefly to sing Calaf, matches his wife’s high C in the final phrase. This is an exciting conclusion to a deeply satisfying traversal of the Puccini canon (Tosca and Il tabarro’s Giorgetta excepted), well supported by the Milan orchestra and Anton Coppola, artistic director of Florida’s Opera Tampa.