Every mezzo these days, it seems, wants to try their luck at the many and various heroines (and travesty heroes) of 19th- century French opera and operetta, and Larmore follows where Vesselina Kasarova and Denyce Graves have gone and Magdalena Ko?ená is shortly to go on disc. There is a pick ‘n’ mix feel to the American mezzo’s programme which invites comparisons, too, with recent records by Anne Sofie von Otter (Offenbach) and Susan Graham (Berlioz and Chabrier) but Larmore can’t be blamed for not casting her net wide to embrace both Auber – the title-role of a real rarity, Zerline (1851) and Ravel – Concepcion from L’heure espagnole (a solo, seldom extracted, which Ko?ená is to feature on her forthcoming French opera recording for DG). As a Rossini mezzo who also sings Carmen, Larmore has the technique and vocal allure to tackle roles as diverse as Massenet’s radiant Cendrillon, Berlioz’s imperious Didon, Saint-Saëns’s sultry Dalila and the volatile Lazuli, the trouser-role lead of Chabrier’s delightful operetta, L’étoile (‘The Lucky Star’).

Larmore is in good voice here, with few traces of the coarsening that marred her ‘Where shall I fly’ recital a few years back (Teldec 12/95). Her French is idiomatic, too, at least sufficiently for those who don’t hear Régine Crespin’s ‘Adieu fière cité, Va, laisse couler mes larmes’ (from Massenet’s Werther) or ‘O ma lyre immortelle’ (Gounod’s Sappho) in their mind’s ear. Larmore’s Rossini technique serves her well for Niklausse’s ‘Vois sous l’archet frémissant’ from Les Contes d’Hoffman and Zerline’s ‘O Palerme! O Sicile’, and she moves easily from knowing comedy (‘Je suis Lazuli!’) to steamy seductiveness (Dalila’s ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre á ta voix’) and wistful nostalgia (Mignon’s ‘Connais-tu le pays’). Perhaps too easily, for there is a sameyness about her singing and characterisation which might make one think twice about listening to this programme in (typically illogical and unchronological) sequence too frequently. The American is luxuriously, stylishly accompanied by the Radio Symphonieorchester, Wien under their French chief conductor, Bertrand de Billy, however and her fans will surely not be disappointed.