There is no shortage of good recordings of Rossini's Stabat Mater, but few do this gloriously uplifting work as much justice as Antonio Pappano's new recording...There is a compelling commitment to this performance. The opening chorus, with its hushed cloak-and-dagger atmosphere punctuated by dramatic outbursts, showcases choral singing of a terrific intensity that pins you to your seat.

Pappano is alive to nuance and inflection in Rossini's score. He allows Anna Netrebko and Joyce DiDonato ample scope for display but never at subtlety's expense...Imaginatively conceived and beautifully delivered.

A precondition for success here is the assembling of a matched quartet of technically accomplished singers blessed with a sense of the Rossini style. Pappano has this absolutely. The pairing of Anna Netrebko and Joyce DiDonato is a match made in heaven...This is one of the great choral recordings.

Pappano and his team really nail the work in a way I've not experienced before...What makes this recording so special is how the specifically Italian credentials of the music resound as though to the manner born...this is the most endearing benchmark performance of what is now revealed as a truly honest work.

Although Rossini isn’t ideal Netrebko repertoire, she sounds positively Verdian in the dramatic hellfire of Inflammatus...Her bright timbre is ideally complemented by DiDonato’s plush, silken mezzo...Pappano lives the text like the great opera conductor he is, bringing consolation as well as fire and brimstone to Rossini’s heady spiritual brew.

The chief glory here is the Accademia di Santa Cecilia chorus, one of the greatest in the world. It's well played, too, though not everyone will like the edge on the brass. Anna Netrebko fans will like her hell-for-leather Inflammatus, but the best of the soloists is bass Ildebrando D'Arcangelo: well-nigh ideal.

The blend of Anna Netrebko's soprano and Joyce DiDonato's mezzo-soprano is particularly effective, both in duet form on "Quis est homo", and underpinned by Lawrence Brownlee's tenor on the opening "Stabat mater dolorosa", while Ildebrando D'Arcangelo brings a magisterial poise to his solo

Pappano's tremendous new recording brings out every ounce of its darkness and force. With a superb quartet of soloists, and the deeply coloured playing and singing of his Italian forces, the piece emerges newly minted as a dramatic masterpiece of harmonic twists and turns, spine-tingling solos and heaven-storming choruses: a superb act of reinterpretation.

The Accademia Chorus is one of the world’s best, and the full, honeyed tone is a constant pleasure. Another of the recording’s rocks is the bass soloist, Ildebrando d’Arcangelo, who never confuses eloquence with shouting and hits his notes dead centre...Brownlee avoids vocal preening and makes sure we can still sense the text’s grieving mother, sharing Christ’s pain.