Each issue in this series of solo recitals presents, in the first place, an individual artist, a singer whose qualities can be more fully appreciated when they are shown in sequence over a wide programme. The singers represent, in turn, a particular type of voice, for instance, the ‘coloratura’ soprano (Elizabeth Futral), the lyric baritone (Alan Opie) or the dramatic bass (John Tomlinson). With each type goes the appropriate repertory, and one of the Great Operatic Arias series’ tenets is to explore and illustrate this. The present disc is Bruce Ford’s second in the series. The first (CHAN 3006) presented the lyric tenor in a ‘central’ programme, with well-known arias such as Handel’s ‘Where’er you walk’, Donizetti’s ‘I saw the tears’, and the Serenade from Bizet’s The Fair Maid of Perth. This is the fare of the tenore di grazia, the Tito Schipa, Heddle Nash or Léopold Simoneau of a generation or two ago. In this second disc, the type is less easily defined.

It is no disparagement of the three distinguished tenors mentioned, nor of Bruce Ford himself, to say that anyone who knows his art well might hesitate to place him side-by-side with them. For one thing, he belongs to an age which has developed a special expertise in florid music that in previous times was widely held to have been unsingable. For example, Bruce Ford’s previous recital disc ended with ‘Finish this futile argument’ – an aria from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, which required a virtuosity unheard of at the time of the opera’s writing and which almost invariably was omitted until recent times. That number pointed ahead to this present disc, which demonstrates the extent and the brilliance of Bruce Ford’s technique.