Bryn Terfel with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra: Tutto Mozart

I always like to say that in opera, the tenor gets the girl, but if it's Mozart, all bets are off and the baritone has more than a healthy chance. This is taken to its extreme in Don Giovanni, in which the bass-baritone gets the girl and then another girl and another girl and then... well, you know the opera.

The larger point, of course, is that Mozart composed a good deal of memorable music for the bass-baritone voice, especially with the varied characters in his operas and Singspiele. No Mozartean baritone need get stuck in the middle of a stage like some grand but rather dull singing tree, bellowing out dark tones. Mozart's bass-baritones get to scheme and seduce and fight, and no one goes home bored.

The Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel has had some notable triumphs in Mozart, with a debut in Cosi fan tutte and subsequent successes in the title role in more than one production of Le nozze di Figaro. He has even sung the lead in Don Giovanni, though, to tell the truth, the guy seems more at home as the righteously angry Figaro or one of the scheming lovers in Cosi.

Terfel's latest recording, Tutto Mozart, draws together the threads of some of those earlier triumphs and offers a tantalizing sampler of roles he has not yet done on stage, plus some Mozart rarities that you're unlikely to encounter otherwise.

For example, Terfel performs Rudolf Moser's version of the Mozart fragment "Warnung," or "Maenner suchen stets zu naschen" (loosely translated as "men are always looking to nosh"). It's a straightforward little tune containing the advice given by parents throughout uncounted centuries: men are after one thing, and it ain't in the cookie jar. I can report that Terfel approaches this selection with appropriate gusto and a sense of fun; musically speaking, he's licking his lips.

Speaking of sweetness, it goes without saying that Terfel also seems a natural for Papageno, a role he hasn't yet performed on stage, or Leporello, the guy in possession of Don Giovanni's not so little black book.

But can he take on the somewhat darker roles -- the count in Figaro, for example, or Don Alfonso in Cosi? Don Giovanni is already part of his repertoire, and he can certainly turn on the charm, as he does here in "La ci darem la mano." Sit back and listen to what he does with key scenes and varying moods of Mozart's works.

Throughout this recording I was struck by what a beautifully expressive instrument Terfel has in that voice. By turns it summons up rage, tenderness, humor, bewilderment, passion -- no doubt everything Mozart intended.

And in case you've been wondering, Terfel is indeed partnered on several tracks. Wherever the music calls for a Dorabella, Papagena, Pamina, or Zerlina, the soprano Miah Persson and the mezzo Christine Rice step in, with enchanting results.

Sit down, pour yourself a cup of Kaffee mit Schlag, and savor Tutto Mozart. Decadent, yes, but youdeserve it.

By the way, between recording albums like this and preparing to sing Wagner's Wotan at the Met, when does Bryn Terfel have time to eat? Pass the Linzer cookies, please.