The young Chinese-born, Swedish-trained tenor Yinjia Gong finished his formal studies just three years ago. For him to be able to encompass, on this disc of French and Italian arias, numbers stretching from Tonio’s top C-laden ‘Ah! mes amis’ and the similarly amiable ‘Mes amis, écoutez l’histoire’ from Adam’s Le postillon de Lonjumeau (taking him up to a top D) through to such heavyweight fare as ‘Nessun dorma’ is mightily impressive.

The range is in part inspired by the two Swedish tenors Gong has, the booklet tells us, always admired, Nicolai Gedda and Jussi Björling. To evoke those names, however, is to invite cruel comparisons. Gong’s voice, essentially lyrical in timbre, has a clean, ringing power to it, and he sings securely right through the range. At the moment, though, he employs a one-size-fits-all, slightly stentorian approach that, well, isn’t really an entirely ideal fit for anything here. There’s no smile in ‘La donna è mobile’, the Donizetti or the Adam – listen to Gedda to hear what’s missing in the latter, or even Juan Diego Flórez’s recent French recital (Decca, 6/14). Gong remains emotionally blank as Don José’s Flower Song starts to get hot under the collar (from 2'20"), although he does offer nice quietish B flats at the end of that aria and Roméo’s ‘Ah! lève-toi, soleil!’ – that at the close of the dutiful ‘Celeste Aida’ doesn’t work quite as well to my ears.

The tenor is currently a member of the ensemble at Theater Regensburg, and he will no doubt prove enormously useful there, where he will also have a chance to let his interpretations develop away from the limelight. Luminously recorded and featuring fine playing from the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under Markus Lehtinen, however, this disc seems to be less about the finished article than this singer’s potential.