In this engaging recital, the best he has recorded so far, Juan Diego Flórez goes from Gluck’s Orphée (1774) to Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi (1918) via some rarities. If he ever sings the Gluck on stage, he will be the best-looking Orpheus for generations. Unfortunately he mispronounces the first words of the aria, ‘J’ai perdu’ emerging as ‘Je perdu’. The other French item, the Serenade from Halévy’s La Juive, fares much better.

Flórez brings some sense of fun to the aria from Verdi’s early comedy Un giorno di Regno, but then gets down to business with the big scene for Idreno in Rossini’s Semiramide. Most theatres, having engaged the two prima-donnas and bass needed for this opera are left without a star tenor. Flórez makes the aria sound like one of the highlights of the score. Rizzi urges the cabaletta on, and once past this, the whole programme seems to take off.

The solo from Lucrezia Borgia (never recorded before) has one of those typical tear-soaked Donizetti melodies, with a terrific flourish at the end. Here Flórez shows off a fuller tone than we have heard from him before.

‘La donna è mobile’ has to feature on every tenor’s list from time to time, but although Flórez sings it well enough, I hope he will steer clear of the Verdi roles; he is unrivalled in Rossini now, as well as things like the lovely aria from Il matrimonio segreto. The lightness and brilliance he brings to this as he sings of the quiet elopement ‘dalla porta del giardino’ is especially alluring. The extract from Gianni Schicchi sounds a little odd as a pendant, but the opera company that could afford to cast him as Rinuccio would be a very rich one, so I suppose it’s fun just to sing it once. Patrick O’Connor

SACD postscript: Recorded in the Auditorium di Milano, Milan, in 2003, this has a very persuasive, comfortable atmosphere. The image is plausibly distanced and there’s a life-like depth and character to the sound-stage. Flórez is refreshingly well integrated, modestly a part of (as opposed to apart from) the orchestral canvas. Ivor Humphreys