The current roster of Decca/Deutsche Grammophon glitters with star sopranos, most of them on the lyric side and many with at least some claim to coloratura. Yet Aleksandra Kurzak continues to set herself apart, her formidable technique matched by vocal charisma and a richness of colour more idiomatic form here under conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi, playing with sympathetic panache. Kurzak sings with poise, rounded tone and evocative colours, moving mercurially from the ecstatic assurance of Semiramide’s Bel raggio to Amenaide’s ardent prayer from Tancredi and even a kittenish not always found in a voice of such agility. Her solo recording debut, Gioia!, came as something of a revelation, and while, two years on, she’s no longer such a surprise, this generous collection of Rossini arias is further proof of the Polish soprano’s ability to dazzle and delight.

The album focusses mostly on the composer’s serious operas: Semiramide, Guglielmo Tell, Matilde di Shabran and, in a nod to Kurzak’s homeland, Sigismondo, whose title character is a 16th-century Polish king. There’s a smattering of comedy too, though, with arias from Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Il Turco in Italia, the former featuring an avuncular cameo by fellow Pole Artur Rucinski as Figaro. Indeed, the album is quite a patriotic affair, recorded in Warsaw with the Sinfonia Varsovia. The orchestra strutted its stuff in some of the same repertoire just a couple of years ago, on young Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva’s own Rossini album, but they’re in finer, more idiomatic form here under conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi, playing with sympathetic panache. Kurzak sings with poise, rounded tone and evocative colours, moving mercurially from the ecstatic assurance of Semiramide’s Bel raggio to Amenaide’s ardent prayer from Tancredi and even a kittenish Rosina. Mathilde’s Selve opaca deserves praise not just for its delicately phrased lyricism but for the equal care lavished upon its hurried, pulsating recitative, and the album’s other Matilde – Leicester’s secret wife in Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra – is just as vividly characterised, her Sento un’interna voce a whirlwind of emphatic coloratura.

It’s hard to sound too desperately sad while skipping through sixteenth notes, but Kurzak is a fine word painter who strives to give these arias real dramatic weight, and her ability to draw a sigh, a tear or a giggle out of a single note is irresistible. She has a slightly darker sound than some of her counterparts in this repertoire – not so much silver as highly polished mahogany, with a slight grain to it. But the world has plenty of twinkly, stratospheric voices, and Kurzak’s full-voiced virtuosity has a thrill all its own.