She is surely vocally ideal for [Carmen], offering both character and taste in numbers that can sound overblown, or even clichéd. Instead, Akhmetshina supplies delicacy and grace, though she can summon up richer colours when she needs to, as in the melancholy central section of the ‘Card Trio’.

Some operatic voices do not respond well to the recording process, but Akhmetshina sounds as gloriously full-voiced from high to low as she does in the opera house...Her Carmen is vivid primarily for the glowing vocal colours, sensuously teasing in the “Seguidilla” (with Freddie De Tommaso as Don José), dark enough to bring fateful shades to the Card Trio.

She has a superb voice, no question, warm and even in tone, admirably agile, with a full, effortless top, and a tangy lower register...It all adds up to a fine recital, and a most auspicious debut.

What’s most striking about Akhmetshina’s Carmen here is her introversion: we always get the sense that this is a woman with a rich and complex inner life, even in the scenes where she’s ostensibly playing to the gallery…Her wide-ranging mezzo is beautifully integrated and secure from top to bottom, with a ringing top D capping Romeo's aria from I Capuleti and a distinctive coppery lower register which never sounds artificially darkened or pressurised.

A striking aspect of her debut solo recording, which unsurprisingly kicks off with three extracts from Bizet’s opera, is how at ease with herself she sounds: her insouciance is irresistible. The most arresting thing, though, is her voice. It’s glowingly expansive in Charlotte’s soliloquy from Massenet’s Werther, poised and electric as Rossini’s caged Rosina, entreating and then swaggering as Bellini’s Romeo, with big high notes any soprano would be proud of.