In 1994, when Riccardo Muti was inducted into the Cavalieri di Verdi by Parma’s prestigious Club dei 27, he noted with surprise that the recording of ‘Va, pensiero’ played at the Masonic-style ceremony was not his. He was met with the abrupt response, ‘No. Yours is too slow!’ Should Riccardo Chailly ever be similarly decorated, he could well meet the same fate, for his new recording is only a few seconds swifter.

There’s a tradition of music directors at La Scala releasing a Verdi album with its chorus. Before Muti (1986-2005 – EMI) came Claudio Abbado (1968 86 – DG, 11/75, 2/85). Now Chailly, at the Milanese helm since 2015, joins the ranks with his own selection.

Chailly is meticulous (some may call it micromanaged) and pays attention to the fine details, drawing performances from the chorus that are always sonorous and tasteful. As with Muti – Maestro ‘Come Scritto’ himself – every I is dotted, every T is crossed. Note the difference in the closing bars of that ‘Va, pensiero’, here in Roger Parker’s edition for Casa Ricordi, where the chorus holds on to its final note (not uncommon) but the final two string chords are bowed rather than plucked, the final chord held for 10 seconds. Scrupulous.

Scrupulous, yet …? The choruses in Verdi’s early ‘Risorgimento operas’ such as Nabucco, I Lombardi and Macbeth were thinly disguised expressions of solidarity for his fellow Italians living under Austrian rule – ‘Patria oppressa’, indeed – and need something more heartening than ‘scrupulous’. In comparing Chailly with his predecessors, time and again it was in Abbado’s accounts that I found the emotion I was seeking, along with a more incisive choral attack and clearer, brighter sound. Chailly’s chorus is more backwardly placed – odd for a recording meant to showcase it.

There is still plenty to enjoy. The two Witches’ choruses from Macbeth are well sung and lusty heights are finally scaled in the famous Anvil Chorus from Il trovatore. There’s lustre to the orchestral playing in the Don Carlo auto-da-fé and the Grand March and ballet music in ‘Gloria all’Egitto’ from Aida plus a delectable flute solo at the close of ‘O Signore, dal tetto natio’ from I Lombardi. Oddly, the programme concludes with the tiny chorus that closes the Prologue from Simon Boccanegra, a bit of an anticlimax after the 12-minute Triumphal scene.