There was a time when it really meant something to be a Russian singer, or a French or Scandinavian one. But as the world has gotten — or seemed to get — smaller and flatter, national cultural traditions have lost some of their distinctiveness.

At least that’s the perception of many old-time opera devotees, who would have been heartened to hear the recital the young Italian soprano Rosa Feola performed on Monday at the Park Avenue Armory.

Ms. Feola, who has been championed by the conductor Riccardo Muti, presented herself as the exponent of a rich national heritage. Joined by the elegant pianist Iain Burnside, she gave splendid renditions of seldom-heard Italian songs by Giuseppe Martucci, Respighi and Rossini. Even Liszt’s “Tre Sonetti del Petrarca” — to the texts of three sonnets by Petrarch — seemed essentially Italian in this company, less like songs than like dramatic scenes, with urgent recitative and aria-like episodes.

Ms. Feola’s artistry is grounded in the bel canto style that has been a hallmark of her country’s vocalism for centuries. Her sound was warm and full without any sense of effort and, even throughout its range, with ornaments emerging as natural extensions of the line. These qualities, which distinguished her performance as Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto” when Ms. Feola made her Metropolitan Opera debut last spring, came through with wonderful immediacy in the intimate Board of Officers Room at the Armory.