For the Romantics, visions could be spiritual or sensual, scary or sublime and this fascinating collection of soprano arias ranges widely. The 19th-century religious fervour of César Franck’s Béatitudes and Jules Massenet’s La Vierge is contrasted with the secular grandeur of Henry Février’s Gismonda from 1919 and Halévy’s fine La Magicienne of 1858. What they all have in common is a nobility of utterance, united here by the stunning soprano of Véronique Gens, more often heard in earlier repertoire but bringing piercing clarity to these arias. There is something unrelenting about the vocal passion; a couple of opera overtures from Hervé Niquet and the Munich Radio Orchestra might have lightened the sequence.
