Imagine Dua Lipa releasing an album of Victorian parlour ballads
Grade: B+ This is unexpected. A bright young cellist – one of the brightest, in fact – makes his recorded debut with a collection of opera fantasies. In the 19th century, touring virtuosos routinely ransacked hit operas for melodies, then decked them out with every conceivable bit of flummery, dazzlement and top-end-tinsel, the better to excite their fans. They were wildly popular. The young Wagner spent a miserable few months in Paris compiling opera fantasies for cash in hand. The process basically radicalised him. Nowadays, there’s no less fashionable genre, and for the excellent 26-year-old American cellist Zlatomir Fung to record a whole disc of the silly things – well,
