It’s four years since Juan Diego Flórez released an album, but he’s back full of singing in this collection of less-than-household- name arias from French composers. Maybe even too full of singing.

The voice itself has everything one would expect from a lyric tenor whose initial success at La Scala resulted in the first encored aria in 70 years. There’s clarity of tone, a ringing quality up top, and a good turn of musical phrase. It also has an insistence and ardour that can work to thrilling effect when projected into big theatres. On recordings, though, an abundance of high notes unleashed with the fury of a thousand hell-cats, can be as much feared as revered, when lyric becomes heroic and the listener is pinned against the living room wall.

That’s why it’s the gentler arias like A la voix d’un amant Fidele from Bizet’s La Jolie Fille du Perth and the reflective O Blonde Ceres from Berlioz’s Trojans that work best on an album that also features works by Boildieu, Donizetti, Adam, Gounod, Delibes and Thomas. Among the better-known things from this catalogue of operas that don’t often get done are the two arias from...