‘Desperate heroines’ runs the rubric for what Sandrine Piau dubs ‘a Mozartian “cartography” of the feminine condition’. Desperation is hardly the word for Susanna’s ‘Deh vieni’ and the shepherd-king Aminta’s avowal of eternal love from Il re pastore. In the main, though, the recital lives up to its billing as a gallery of Mozartian women in extremis, whether recovering from traumatic loss (Ilia, Donna Anna) or facing death (Aspasia in Mitridate, Giunia in Lucio Silla). Sympathetically partnered by Ivor Bolton and his expert Salzburg players, Piau sings delightfully, with fresh, pellucid tone and keen dramatic understanding. All the more frustrating, then, that the disc runs for a niggardly 48 minutes and that Naïve fails to provide any context for the individual arias.

These gripes aside, Piau brings each of these women, amorous, vulnerable and/or tormented, to vivid life. Her tender shaping of ‘Non mi dir’ convinces you that Donna Anna does indeed love Don Ottavio; and her ease in coloratura enables the final section to flow at a nimble, graceful allegretto. Piau has successfully sung Donna Anna onstage, and she and Naïve have surely missed a trick by not including the imperious ‘Or sai chi l’onore’. Elsewhere she finds an extra sensuous warmth in her tone for Susanna’s aria, and a darker intensity for Aspasia’s Gluckian ombra scena and Sandrina’s ‘mad scene’ in La finta giardiniera. Perhaps Piau’s Barbarina is a touch over-sophisticated – though her little aria, trailing away inconclusively, never works well in isolation. And while she has exactly the right voice for Ilia, Piau makes the Trojan princess too much of a shrinking violet, fading wanly at the end of phrases. That said, many of the numbers here give unalloyed pleasure, not least Sandrina’s cooing ‘turtle dove’ aria and a lovingly phrased ‘L’amerò’ from Il re pastore that comes close to my ideal of Mozartian singing.