The most surprising aspect of this new recording is the sheer variety of music it features. There are the expected arias from Verdi's Otello (a Iago who is evil to the core) and Rossini's Il Barbiere (Don Basilio's aria gathering a fiendish momentum), and Terfel excels as a Scarpia imbued with a smouldering mix of rage, desire and arrogance, and as the persuasive silver-tongued quack Dulcamara (Donizetti's L'Elisir d'amore) peddling his potions. But adding in the stirringly sentimental Stars from Les Miserables does actually work, as does Terfel's edgy Mack the Knife (Weill's Threepenny Opera) and his marvellous portrayal of Sweeney Todd (with an amazing Cockney cameo from Anne Sofie von Otter). I was not so convinced by Terfel as Sportin' Life from Porgy and Bess, and Barnaba's aria from La Gioconda did not work so well out of context, but I doubt if we will ever hear on disc a better rendition of Roderic's When the night wind howls from Sullivan's Ruddigore. To top it all off, Terfel sings all three roles (Don Giovanni, the Commendatore and Leporello) in a cleverly-engineered final scene from Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Reviewed by Anne McAlister