The timing is well chosen. With a production of Il pirata at New York’s Metropolitan Opera coming up in her diary, this was a good moment for Renée Fleming to remind us that the world’s number one Strauss soprano keeps some bel canto roles in her repertoire. The adjective ‘bel’ has never been a problem for her, since this is one of the most beautiful voices around. Slow, dreamy solos are her favourite, though please note there is no ‘Casta diva’ here (included on one of her earlier discs) or Juliet’s lovely aria from I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Otherwise collectors should have no complaints about the programme.

A live recording of Rossini’s Armida was one of the first operas in Fleming’s discography (Sony, 3/95 – nla) and the showpiece ‘D’amore al dolce impero’ comes round again here. If the previous recording (with the Bologna Teatro Comunale Orchestra conducted by Daniele Gatti –) has the edge, it is because the opera-house atmosphere gets the blood pressure going. The tempi are less crisp this time and some mannerisms have crept into Fleming’s singing, as Summers and the St Luke’s Orchestra perhaps unwisely give her all the time she wants. The closing scene from La sonnambula invites direct comparison with Angela Gheorghiu’s bel canto disc (EMI, 8/02). More purposeful phrasing is to Gheorghiu’s advantage in the aria, where Fleming loses her way worrying over expressive details, but Fleming sings the cabaletta, which Gheorghiu does not, so overall the honours are even. Throughout the disc Fleming imaginatively offers her own decorations. In ‘Ah, non giunge’ this means simple embellishments for the first verse and going back to Bellini’s original for the second – the reverse of what we usually hear, but attractive in its own way.

Put this disc on blind and I doubt many people would think the singer was Italian. The true Italianate style is founded on keeping the vocal line taut, where Fleming is lusciously relaxed, as she might be in the Trio from Der Rosenkavalier. But the two Donizetti tracks manage to generate some heat: Lucrezia Borgia, in particular, is a role she has tackled in full, though I do not remember the cadenza flashing up to a Queen-of-Night high F when she sang the opera at Carnegie Hall.

As for the closing scene from Il pirata, one of the grand challenges of bel canto, New Yorkers should have something to look forward to. Those fearless two-octave leaps in the closing pages should certainly get the applause going in the theatre. At home this does not mean we will be throwing out our Callas CDs – Fleming is all soft-focus by comparison, beautifying the music where Callas goes to its dramatic heart – but then it would be hard to name any other singer today for whom we would.