Superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann is riding the crest of a wave
at the moment. Tickets to see him on stage change hands for a
premium and his previous recital discs, together with his DVDs
of Carmen and Lohengrin, have won critical accolades from every
corner. This latest album of Verismo Arias showcasing all that
he is good at will prove every bit as popular.
The ace up
Kaufmann’s sleeve is his utterly distinctive tenor voice: dark
and smoky so as to be almost baritonal, it seems tailor-made to
express uncontrollable passion. It is perfect for an album of
verismo material. Famously full-blooded and reckless, the
Italian verismo genre is full of heroes who stare into the abyss
and this Kaufmann does most convincingly. The first track on the
disc, Romeo finding Juliet’s body in Zandonai’s opera, is his
own desert-island track. He brilliantly taps into the level of
scarcely contained sorrow in the music. Throughout Kaufmann
conveys suffering through his inflection of each phrase as well
as through the musicality of his voice: Andrea Chenier awaiting
execution, for example, sings with extraordinary beauty, but the
portrayal gains its power from the sense of regret for the good
times lost. Likewise, Federico’s lament from L’Arlesiana is
powerful and controlled but it gains its power from the wistful
feeling of loss that comes through the pastoral simplicity of
the music.
Kaufmann is not above hell-for-leather
passion, however: Canio’s suffering feels titanic in Vesti la
Giubba and we are in no doubt that, in the final scene of
Cavalleria Rusticana, Turridu has never been more in love with
the life he knows he is about to lose. Likewise, Marcello’s aria
from Leoncavallo’s Bohème explodes off the page, throbbing with
passion. In an interpretation like this it would give anything
by Puccini a run for its money.
Happily, though, the more
positive side of life is represented here too, most successfully
in the numbers from Boito’s Mefistofele as Faust’s lovely
reflections on life and nature bring out the most tender aspects
of Kaufmann’s voice. Amor ti vieta burns with Italianate passion
and Turridu’s drinking song crackles with cheeky joie de vivre.
Enzo’s Cielo e Mar is also very beautiful, dark and searching
where others find only the lover’s passion.
There are
rarities here too, most especially Corrado’s farewell from
Ponchielli’s Lituani and a song from Licinio Refice which is
wonderfully slushy and provides three minutes to wallow in. It
was also a lovely indulgence to finish with the great Liebestod
that ends Andrea Chenier. For this Kaufmann is joined by Eva
Maria Westbroek who takes a little longer to find form than he
does. The soaring climaxes are wonderfully uplifting and make an
exhilarating end to the disc.
Pappano and his orchestra
make excellent collaborators, most notably in the Mascagni
numbers, enhancing their claim to be the finest Italian
orchestra playing at the moment. If I am slightly less
enthusiastic about this disc than Kaufmann’s previous recitals
then it’s only because the music represented here isn’t on the
same sustained level of greatness as, say, the German music on
his Sehnsucht album and, for me, more than an hour of full-face
verismo is rather a lot to take at one sitting. That’s a
personal preference which not everyone will share and you have
to take your hat off to the tenor for pushing himself beyond his
traditional comfort zone. Kaufmann’s many fans need not
hesitate, he is on excellent form throughout.
