Evgeny Nikitin is an estimable Wagnerian but is perhaps best known for a performance that never happened. He was cast to sing the Flying Dutchman at Bayreuth in 2012, only for old photos to emerge of him sporting a ‘swastika’ tattoo (subsequently covered up) on his chest. He was swiftly replaced in the midst of the sort of media brouhaha that Bayreuth does so well. Now, three years later, we have a chance to sample what might have been, albeit only in the Dutchman’s opening monologue, as part of this slightly ramshackle collection of the composer’s ‘arias’ (only two of the seven tracks, three of which are purely orchestral numbers, could reasonably be designated as such).

Nikitin is a charismatic singer with impressive authority, his timbre solid if soft-grained and a little woolly, especially at the top of his range, from E and above. His German also has a pronounced Slavic tinge, most noticable in his slightly buzzy consonants. Allied to these characteristics is what feels like an occasional lack of dramatic engagement: his ‘Die Frist ist um’, for example, occasionally sounds disengaged, and when it comes to Wotan’s Farewell, he communicates little about the gravity of the situation. ‘Der Augen leuchtendes Paar’ in the same scene shows that he’s not always comfortable singing below forte – there are similar problems in the Lohengrin extract at ‘Du wilde Seherin’ (around 13'00") and at the close of a very respectable but hardly ideally comfortable Song to the Evening Star.

The highlight, in fact, is that Lohengrin duet, where Nikitin matches the wildness – dramatic as well as, on occasion, vocal – of Michaela Schuster’s Ortrud. Christian Arming secures decent playing from the Liège orchestra, whose strong wind section makes up for less than ideally steady violins. But while this disc might offer a decent souvenir of Nikitin in the theatre, it’s hardly an essential purchase otherwise.