The adulatory – and appallingly translated – booklet-note by Sylvain Fort, eulogy piled on eulogy, immediately had me squirming. “It must be saluted when a singer has not only the gift of voice but also – how to define it, albeit a bit foolishly – a look more moving, skin whiter (as Homer says of Helen), a more dignified and human way of carrying herself…” And it doesn’t get better. Pretentious gush and flummery crowd out even a cursory discussion of the arias and evidently left no room for translations of the aria texts.

Still, if you can ignore the presentational mayhem, there is much to enjoy in the young Belgian soprano’s recital live from La Monnaie, Brussels, in 2006. Her vernal, finely focused timbre, gleaming top notes and grace of style make her a natural in Mozart, as acclaimed appearances at La Monnaie, Aix and Salzburg have confirmed. To my ears Karthäuser sounds too doleful in Ilia’s rapturous song to the breezes, “Zeffiretti lusinghieri”. Elsewhere, though, she characterises with feeling and spirit, whether in Ilia’s initial grieving recitative and aria, or in Pamina’s aria, an intense, “lived” performance, beautifully shaded, the tricky wide leaps exquisitely negotiated.

With venomously spitting consonants, Karthäuser works up a fine lather in the raging “Tiger” aria from Zaïde and reveals an agile, elegant coloratura technique in two extravagant but vapid early bravura showpieces. Her acute response to shifting mood and harmony in “Ch’io mi scordi di te” is slightly compromised by the misfit between the silvery fortepiano and the solid modern-instrument orchestra. Orchestral accompaniments throughout, in fact, are serviceable but unimaginative, not least in the autopilot handling of repeated notes. Karthäuser, a lovely Mozart singer, deserves a better setting.