Classical Album: Angela Gheorghiu, My Puccini (EMI Classics)

If Richard Wagner could be said to have laid the blueprint for the development of heavy metal, as some claim, then Giacomo Puccini was certainly the model for heavy rock's bad attitude regarding women.

It's small wonder – given the tendency of his operatic heroines to end up dead – that Angela Gheorghiu should admit, of her role as Magda in La Rondine, that "it's a relief not to die at the end of an opera!" Magda is just one of the parts performed by the Romanian soprano in this anthology of Puccini arias, which takes in most of his famous female roles, from Manon Lescaut to Tosca, with an additional DVD offering further selections including Turandot and Madama Butterfly, the latter's "Un Bel Di" featuring the distraught heroine in an art deco setting, intercut with shots of Pinkerton typing his farewell letter. Despite her light-hearted misgivings about the fate of Puccini's heroines, it's clear from the gusto with which she attacks these arias that Gheorghiu revels in the combination of high melodrama and crowd-pleasing melodies which mark the composer's operas.

Pick of the Album: 'Un Bel Di', 'Sola, Perduta, Abbandonata', 'Mi Chiamano Mimi'

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