Julie Roset is playing the long game. Big wins at the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition in 2022 and Operalia in 2023 could easily have pressed fast-forward on the French soprano’s career, but the 28-year-old has bided her time, consolidating her operatic reputation with debuts in Aix, Paris, Madrid, and the Met, and building her recording portfolio with two ravishing discs as one third of early-music vocal-trio La Néréide. Only now is she releasing her solo debut.

And boy is M’a dit Amour worth the wait. Roset teams up with pianist Susan Manoff for an all-French program that takes chanson and mélodie from the Belle Epoque salon to the 21st-century recital hall, lingering mid-century with Debussy, Louis Beydts and more. Yes there are some classics here – both Debussy’s piano and vocal versions of La fille aux cheveux de lin, as well as his En sourdine and Hahn’s Naïs – but for the most part the recital prefers the less-trodden paths.

The title song by Charles Koechlin is an exquisite quasi-vocalise, its enigmatic text floating free in the voice, anchored often by only a single note or phrase from the piano. Mel Bonis’s gently rhapsodic Songe is deliciously pitched. Louis Beydt’s cycle Chansons pour Oiseaux charms and surprises – now witty, now lyrical. Songs by the only living composer on the program – Isabelle Aboulker – are elegant miniatures, packed with personality.

Roset’s high soprano is liquid-pure and endlessly expressive, relishing the colour and weight of texts in her native language. 

Her interplay with Manoff is one of the disc’s chief joys, a partnership of spontaneous exchange rather than worked-beauty – the first entry of En Sourdine, Roset breaking the surface-tension of Manoff’s glassy piano introduction, is impeccably judged. Occasional moments of tension at the very top of the voice, as well as legato sometimes sacrificed for phrase-by-phrase drama, reveal an artist still under construction, but this is as exciting a debut as I’ve heard for a long time: singing as intelligent as it is lovely. 

Listen on Apple Music

Title: M’a dit Amour
Works: Songs by Debussy, Louis Beydts, Isabelle Aboulker et al.
Performers: Julie Roset s, Susan Manoff p
Label: Alpha Classics ALPHA1189