Classic CD: Renee Fleming & Sofie von Otter

Anne Sofie von Otter: Douce France (Naïve).

Renee Fleming: Guilty Pleasures (Decca) Stars: 4/5
Anne Sofie von Otter: Douce France (Naïve) Stars: 5/5

Verdict: Divas relax and divert with their songs of choice.

Today's divas thrive on diversity. Renee Fleming throws Met audiences into ecstasies with Massenet in the opera house; yet her Dark Hope album saw the American soprano singing the music of rock bands like Arcade Fire and Muse.

Recently she was chirping operatic parodies for David Letterman's Top Ten, extolling a gay-friendly Pope and mocking call-on-hold jingles.

The lady with the lustrous voice should not feel too remorseful over Guilty Pleasures, a deluxe disc of lollipops with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Sebastian Lang-Lessing.

The only total embarrassment is a treacle-trawl through Danny Boy; otherwise, 17 tracks run amiably from the wannabe Carmen of Delibes' Les Filles de Cadix to two of Canteloube's popular jaunts to the Auvergne.

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.