A great deal is expected of Dinara Alieva, a young soprano from Azerbaijan who has collected an array of competition awards in 2010 prior to a Vienna opera debut. Her busy diary of engagements now stretches through the next four years and include the world’s great opera houses, including the Vienna State Opera, Frankfurt Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin. It is indeed a very beautiful voice, as you will hear in a very effecting account of the Letter Scene from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, and one so precious that I hope it will be carefully nurtured by taking lyric roles before embarking on dramatic characterisation. As she writes her letter you can here visualize the young girl suddenly filled with love, and passionately wishing to express her feelings. I was also pleased with her account of the first and seventh of the composer’s opus 47, where she uses words so effectively. Maybe she should have opened the disc with these, Rachmaninov’s Vocalise requiring a singer who can float notes and leave them hanging on air. The remainder of the disc is largely given to two arias each from Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride. She seems particularly suited to Rimsky’s perky Marfa in the second act, and whose eventual sadness Alieva also movingly portrays. The New Russia State Symphony Orchestra admirably fills the backdrop for conductor Dmitry Yablonsky, and while Alieva is placed well forward, orchestral detail is well defined. © 2013 David’s Review Corner