Isabel Bayrakdarian has carved out quite a niche with her recorded catalogue, defined by smart programming ideas. There was an early disc devoted to Cleopatra in her various operatic guises (CBC, 7/05), while more recent releases have drawn on her Armenian heritage, including ‘The Other Cleopatra’ (Delos, 7/20), who was married to Tigranes the Great. The soprano has been resident in a number of countries and describes herself as Lebanese-born Canadian-Armenian-American. Something of this itinerant lifestyle informs her new album, a programme entitled ‘La zingarella’, with the subtitle ‘Through Romany Songland’.

The bulk of the programme is based on two sets of art songs drawn from Romany melodies: eight of Brahms’s Zigeunerlieder, Op 103, and Dvořák’s Cigánské melodie (Gypsy Songs). To increase the gypsy flavour, the songs are performed in new arrangements – as are all the items here apart from Bizet’s Habanera – by either Peter Tiefenbach or John Greer (Dvořák) for piano and strings. It’s not quite a Budapest café gypsy fiddler scenario, although when Mark Fewer gets stuck into a fruity violin cadenza before Bayrakdarian has even opened her mouth in the first track, Liszt’s ‘Die drei Zigeuner’, you do wonder where we’re heading. The arrangements give an earthy feel, which also suits Bayrakdarian’s approach, which relies more on characterisation and colour than vocal purity of line. Her soprano has quite a mezzo-ish tinge to it, which adds plenty of warmth to her interpretations of the Brahms and Dvořák. The latter set includes the famous ‘Songs my mother taught me’.

Bayrakdarian really has fun in the rest of her programme, which takes the listener through Spanish-inspired repertoire. She launches into three songs by Sebastián de Iradier with carefree gusto. The last of these is ‘El arreglito’, the song that Bizet unwittingly purloined (believing it was a genuine folk song) for Carmen’s Habanera, which then immediately follows it on the next track.

Henry Gilbert’s Two South American Gypsy Songs are persuasively seductive and ‘La zingarella’ from Maurice Yvain’s operetta Chanson gitane gives the album its title. She includes a couple of other operetta numbers, from Lehár’s Zigeunerliebe and Kálmán’s Die Csárdásfürstin, which are suitably fiery. It’s natural that Bayrakdarian would want to end with something American (she is now based in California) but she sounds less than idiomatic in Victor Herbert’s ‘Gypsy Love Song’.

Jamie Parker is the accomplished pianist and Fewer, Juan-Miguel Hernandez (viola) and the Gryphon Trio offer lively support on what is an entertaining album, particularly for its fresh take on the Brahms and Dvořák songs.