As a fascinating new recording by the young Polish guitarist Roch Modrzejewski, "Fantasias on Operas", reminds us, the classical guitar was also once considered an ideal medium for this form of operatic domestication.  Of the seven works he records, four are based on themes by Bellini, testimony to the haunting appeal of the Sicilian composer’s music, not to mention the guitar’s ability to sustain long bel canto lines.  Modrzejewski’s sensitivity to colour, and the refined musicality of his phrasing, makes him an excellent re-interpreter of these operatic melodies, and he also has a brilliant technique when the inevitable virtuosic showing-off is required.  The centrepiece of his recording, appropriately enough, is Mauro Giuliani’s Variations on the Cavatina from Rossini’s Otello. Giuliani’s works – not least his freshly invigorating Concerto No.1 in A – form the core of 19th-century guitar repertoire, and six sets of his fantasias (Opp. 119-24) actually bear the title Rossiniane. This earlier set, Op. 101, is further evidence of his fondness for Rossini.  Bellini’s Norma and Il Pirata serve as the inspiration for the discs’s two opening works, both by the French guitar virtuoso Napoléon Coste; and other famous guitarist-composers such as Luigi Legnani and Giulio Regondi feature too. The Hungarian Johann Kaspar Mertz is represented with the premiere recording of a piece based on Donizetti’s Marino Faliero.  Dubbed the “Chopin of the guitar”, Kraków’s Jan Nepomuk de Bobrowicz also receives a premiere recording, with his Variations and Polonaise on a duet from Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi.  The majestic Polish dance that rounds it off shows how this half-forgotten genre not only transcribed operatic tunes but transported them too.  ‘Roch Modrzejewski: Fantasias on Operas’ is out now  Follow Telegraph Opera on Twitter
With his virtuosic new recording of opera tunes, Poland's Roch Modrzejewski   has revived a much-neglected corner of the guitar repertoire, says John   Allison.