As a programme, this, I would say, is a mess. I’m not too keen on it in other respects either.

Let’s first give credit where it is certainly due. The young soprano displays impressive technical skills in her singing of florid music; scales and other passagework are immaculate in clarity and evenness, and they are blessedly innocent of aspirates and other easing devices. The upper range no doubt extends beyond the limits reached here yet that is far enough for normal purposes and involves no shrillness.

There for the moment one has to stop, for the basic requirement of pure tone was not satisfied by what I heard. It has to be put like that because I have recently acquired new speakers and am not at present on good terms with them. However: comparisons involving Kathleen Battle, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Rosemary Joshua, Sylvia McNair and Kiri Te Kanawa found none of these to be afflicted with this rather sharp metallic admixture which in my book rates as tonal impurity. In style too an unwelcome element creeps in, with a croony plaintiveness and emotive breathing doing duty for pathos in arias such as Cleopatra’s “Piangerò” and the sluggishly progressing “Lascia ch’io pianga”.

But what is this disc? As a Handel-Mozart recital it is compromised by the bits and pieces of arrangements and the farrago of Karl Jenkins’s Exsultate Jubilate. Meanwhile, Mozart’s is given without its middle movement. The short solo from Don Giovanni makes doubtful sense in isolation and the introduction of Bryn Terfel’s voice for one duet only adds to the sense of “bittiness”. And in spite of all this, one would still have thought that the combined wits of those concerned could have come up with a brighter title than “Diva”!