A rumtopf-and-cream Traume makes one impatient to hear all five of Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder.
If her Falla misses some of the requisite grit and passion, rarely heard arias from Dvorak's Armida and Smetana's The Kiss more than compensate.
Swedish mezzo Anne Sofie von Otter has always been adventurous, balancing Abba songs in her 2005 I Let The Music Speak with the poignant musical flowers that survived Nazi oppression in her 2007 Terezin/Theresienstadt.
Her latest double set, Douce France, has one disc featuring the melodies of Hahn, Saint-Saens, Faure, Loeffler, Ravel and Debussy, the other chansons from Trenet to Monnot.
The coupling says much about the essential lightness and stylishness of French music - significantly, Hahn also strays into the second selection.
Others may deliver Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis with more of a plein-air billow, but the 58-year-old singer, with simpatico pianist Bengt Forsberg, knows how to tell stories that will keep you rapt.
A campy Danse Macabre with violist Antoine Tamestit takes us nicely from salon to cabaret, with the snazziest of 12-piece bands.
A Manos Hadjidakis ballad broods magnificently while she breezes through Charles Trenet's billet doux to his homeland.
She scats through vintage Michel Legrand with Margareta Bengston and is a Left Bank chansonniere par excellence in a harp-laden La vie en rose.
By itself this disc would be heaven; with its companion, you have the musical stairway that gets you there.
