Here’s an extraordinary coincidence. We wait during the course of Massenet’s centenary year for a new release that presents some lesser-known music – and then two come along at the same time. Not only that, but they are recitals by sopranos with similar aspirations and the rarities they have chosen are near to identical – right down to the ungainly adaptation of the ‘Méditation’ from Thaïs as an ‘Ave Maria’ for soprano, proudly listed as ‘inédit’ on the Decca cover.

There is no question that the glamorous Nathalie Manfrino, Decca’s soprano, looks the part as a seductive Massenet heroine. Her disc starts with La Vierge, sung with a natural feeling for the French style but a rather thin tone, the worrying strain at the end being an early sign of problems to come. Manfrino came to notice as Manon in Palermo, also under Plasson’s baton, and it is easy to imagine her success from the bright-eyed way she lights up the character in two arias here. Nothing else equals those in personality, though she does lend a touching fragility to Sapho that brings to mind Renée Doria’s complete recording. Elsewhere, comparisons are not to her advantage, especially in the grander operas: her ‘Pleurez mes yeux’ from Le Cid lacks stature alongside Gheorghiu (let alone Callas), and ‘Il est doux’ from Hérodiade is a pale shadow of what Régine Crespin made of it on her single LP of highlights, a collector’s item. Nor is Manfrino another Joan Sutherland, and the climax of the Act 3 aria from Esclarmonde leaves her defeated. Gratitude for the enterprising programme, coupled with Plasson’s sympathetic accompaniments, is undermined by the unavoidable conclusion that the singer herself is overparted.

The rival disc offers a couple of rarities of its own – arias from Don César de Bazan and Chérubin – but is still less deserving of a recommendation. Even next to Manfrino, Rima Tawil is beset by an array of vocal ‘issues’, chief among them an incipient wobble against which she is engaged in a constant battle. Some years ago the Australian label Melba issued a similar recital disc with Rosamund Illing and Massenet champion Richard Bonynge, and its solid performances suddenly seem an old-fashioned good deed from down under.