Vargas deserves his party. He was welcomed in these columns in a Rossini/Donizetti recital on Claves (11/92) and then sidetracked as far as his recording career was concerned for the next seven years. Then his Werther appeared and signalled his recognition as one of the best and most useful lyric tenors of his time. Over the past five years or so, RCA has shown its faith in him and he in turn has proved his worth. And now he has a little gala to himself and a number of (presumably) congenial colleagues, with whom he sings mostly in duet, in one instance à trios and then in the finale to Don Carlo with a small company and in a longer excerpt.

The ‘friends’ include no other tenors but do have among them no fewer than four baritones. The duets are all favourites and have an illustrious history on records. Vargas and Frontali can hold their own in the line from Caruso and Scotti to Domingo and Milnes, their ‘Solenne in quest’ora’ being particularly satisfying: finely matched voices in a faithfully recreative performance. Vassily Gerello confirms the live impression of him as a singer to watch, while the veteran Nucci, whom we have watched for many years now, is a sure-footed Dulcamara. Manuel Lanza has a tricky moment on his way to ‘Numero quindici’ but is a lively partner nevertheless. The ladies in the Maometto trio (the one surprise item to find in the programme) set, in turn, a high standard for their tenor, who is the last to join in, and it is greatly to his credit that he then sings with unostentatious fluency and takes as his priority a proper blend of voices.

Vargas is not, I think, a tenor remarkable for the individuality or imaginativeness of his singing, and there are times when a more personal touch would be welcome. His achievements are impressive even so – how many of the tenors in that illustrious line of Forza duettists on record could also have made such a capital Almaviva in the Barbiere?