Mustering up his most menacing grimace for the front cover image and looking a little like the way Victor McLaglan looked in John Ford's The Informer bass-baritone Bryn Terfel delivers his latest DG offering, Bad Boys, a collection of arias drawn from the repertoire of the bad guys in opera: Mephistopheles, Scarpia, Iago, Sportin' Life, and others. Terfel is very much in his element and on his game here, and the recording is gloriously full and well detailed, featuring the Swedish Radio Symphony under Paul Daniel with the expert Swedish Radio Choir tipping in at key points.
The younger pop-influenced and tabloid-friendly Katherine Jenkins might have recently stolen her thunder, but Lesley Garrett was the first, and some would say most authentic, contemporary British female soprano to crossover to the mainstream. While she's recently gained more attention for her appearances on Strictly Come Dancing and Comic Relief Does Fame Academy, and her Classic FM radio show, The Very Best of Lesley Garrett is the chance to remind everyone of the hugely powerful vocals which propelled her from the English National Opera's principal soprano to chart-bothering operatic superstar.