Roberta Alexander - Puccini: Songs & Rare Pieces (2020)

… this is an essential disc for Puccini-fanciers … these chips off the workbench fascinatingly illuminate what we know of the opera composer … The recorded sound is very vivid and immediate for the excellent Raphael Quartet as for the soprano and piano. Gramophone … The happiest such effort [samplings of Puccini’s songs] so far is Roberta Alexander’s, which not only balances off titles with a variety of moods but gives them unpretentious vocal life, intimate rather than operatic in style.