Our April Recording of the Month is the latest in Opera Rara’s ongoing project to record Donizetti Songs (all 200 or so). All four volumes to date have done much to enhance the composer’s reputation, but the combination of tenor Michael Spyres and Carlo Rizzi on piano makes the particular tranche of French songs on Volume 3 a five-star must-hear (Opera Rara 9293802562).

The program, mostly written with fashionable Parisian salons in mind, opens in high style with Le Retour au désert, a dashing salute from a master to his horse, which Donizetti sets as a rollicking Spanish bolero. Spyres’ swashbuckling tone and nimble articulation paints a lively portrait, as it does in a string of upbeat gems.

What makes this album unique, however, are the more unusual items, like La Dernière nuit d’un novice, a lurid 12-minute narrative in which a young novice is tempted by an evil spirit reminding him of his not-quite-forgotten sins of the flesh. With supple tone and pinpoint diction, Spyres does justice to both characters, his opera singer’s instincts adding to the listener’s sense of involvement.

Recorded in natural sound, the voice forward just a touch, this is a peach of...