In the booklet note for her second solo album, Nadine Sierra waxes lyrical about how she was formed as a singer, ‘made for opera’, as the disc’s title puts it, offering us a narrative of female creativity, enthusiastically told. In part she ascribes her talent to instinctive musicality: at the age of three months, she tells us, her mother noticed her tapping her feet to music played on the car radio. There was the encouragement of her Portuguese grandmother, herself a fine singer, though prevented by social constraints at the time from pursuing a professional career. Then there were the artists who inspired and taught her: Teresa Stratas and Renata Scotto, whom she first heard on a video of La bohème when she was 10, and Marilyn Horne, with whom she later trained.

As a result, Sierra now seems to be embarking upon a major career. Flanked by extracts from La traviata and Roméo et Juliette, two big scenes from Lucia di Lammermoor form the disc’s centrepiece, and its release coincides with performances of Donizetti’s opera in Naples, Munich and a new production at the Met, the last of these with Riccardo Frizza, who also conducts here. She has, however, divided opinion in these pages. I was quite taken with her spirited Nannetta on DVD from Berlin in 2018 with Barenboim (C Major, 8/21), though Mark Pullinger expressed reservations about her Gilda (‘self-admiring pretty notes held for far too long’ – Delos, 3/18), while Edward Seckerson commented on the variability of both her diction and her dramatic involvement in her debut album ‘There’s a Place for Us’ (DG, 11/18).

I’ve heard neither recording, though the new album suggests considerable development in some areas. There’s no doubt about the appealing brightness of Sierra’s voice, with its silvery upper registers and surprising tang lower down. Her technique and dynamic control can, on occasion, be formidable. Coloratura flows and sparkles with consummate ease and long lines are sustained with a scrupulous legato. The interpolated top E flats in Lucia’s Mad Scene and Violetta’s ‘Sempre libera’ are magnificent and effortless. She departs from the traditional cadenza in ‘Ah, fors’è lui’ with a pianissimo ascent into the stratosphere, which may well be self-indulgent but is exquisite in itself.

We certainly now hear the words with admirable clarity, though I had qualms on occasion about her intermittent depth of characterisation. Her Lucia is notably generalised here, lacking the expressive intensity of Callas, Sutherland or Sills, and reminiscent in some ways of a previous, less overtly involved (though vocally exacting) generation of interpreters such as Lily Pons or Roberta Peters, an impression reinforced by the omission, once traditional, now usually reinstated, of Enrico and Raimondo’s interjections between ‘Alfin son tua’ and ‘Spargi d’amaro pianto’ in the Mad Scene.

Her Violetta, however, is touching if restrained, with the introspection of ‘Ah, fors’è lui’ nicely contrasted with the giddy brilliance of ‘Sempre libera’, and ‘Addio, del passato’ exhausted and world-weary rather than overtly tragic. Best of all, though, is her Juliette. ‘Je veux vivre’ is by turns tellingly headstrong and nostalgic, while ‘Amour ranime mon courage’ is the finest track on the disc, sung with startling fixity of purpose, her voice soaring ecstatically at ‘Verse toi-même ce breuvage!’. Frizza and his RAI orchestra, thoughtful, detailed and considerate elsewhere, let all the stops out here too, and the effect is unquestionably thrilling. The playing is excellent, as are the choral contributions. Paolo Fanale, meanwhile, makes an insistent rather than amorous-sounding Alfredo, while Veta Pilipenko is a better Alisa than we usually hear. Extensive stage experience, one hopes, will give Sierra’s Lucia greater dramatic resonance. As it is, this is a beautiful recital that nevertheless doesn’t always engage as it might.