I find it a little odd that Rolando Villazón brings so much of the opera house with him to this recital of Latin American songs – especially as the accompaniments are played on the harp, with its intimate, guitar-like associations, rather than a concert grand. It’s understandable, perhaps, in a song like Julián Aguirre’s ‘Caminito’ from 1900, whose vaulting, impassioned melody practically invites stentorian fervour, but surely not in Yvette Souviron’s delicately coloured, almost Impressionist ‘Al banco solitario’, which Villazón caps with tiny verismo sobs.

And because so many of these songs have deep folkloric roots and thus require a certain artlessness, I find the tenor most compelling when he’s at his most gentle and emotionally direct. Listen, say, to the feeling of quiet ecstasy he brings to Carlos Guastavino’s ‘La rosa y el sauce’, or to how much heartache he conveys in the 72 seconds of Alberto Ginastera’s ‘Zamba’.

Villazón is in good voice throughout most of the programme, although I notice a certain hollowness in his tone at the lower end of his register – try Alberto Nepomuceno’s ‘Coração triste’, for example, which seems to sit in a slightly uncomfortable spot for him. Still, he sings it beautifully, and it’s such a delightfully wistful discovery, that such minor imperfections shouldn’t put you off. Indeed, one of the joys of this recital is how pleasantly it wanders off the beaten path.

That said, I don’t find the inclusion of the more contemporary material to be entirely successful. Part of the problem is that the tenor’s interpretations are relatively ponderous. Seek out Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez’s own recordings of his ‘En estos días’ (1977) and ‘La vida’ (1994), which are so light, as if he’s singing to and for himself – which makes sense given the songs’s discursive, Dylan-esque (Bob, not Thomas) qualities. Villazón is more persuasive in the traditional Mexican lament ‘La llorona’, where his lilting, plaintive performance is as moving in its own way as that of Chavela Vargas’s.

Xavier de Maistre, who arranged all of the songs, is a wonderfully sensitive partner, and dazzles in the solo pieces peppered throughout the programme. Some detail in his playing is lost in the resonance of the Salle Colonne in Paris, alas, particularly in faster numbers such as Abreu’s ‘Tico-Tico no fubá’ (made famous by Carmen Miranda), although the acoustic is flatteringly helpful to the singer. All in all, then, a tantalising taste of little-known repertory that richly repays further exploration.