Jonas Kaufmann, Nina Stemme, with Claudio Abbado conducting –
it reads like a throwback to the glory days of opera recording,
and in many ways it is, taken from live Lucerne Festival
performances with thrilling sound. The drawback is the German
recitative, which sounds more tedious and stagy the longer it
goes on. You’ll keep skipping tracks to get back to the music.
Kaufmann, though, means buy it now.
