The Sunday Times, 1 August 2010

Hugh Canning

Wagner: Lohengrin, Bayreuth, 25 July 2010

Spellbinding teutonic nights

Auszug:

German audiences are very picky when it comes to their own productions but they can rest easy on this ... Booing and barracking of the production team has become so predictable at Bayreuth that when we from the premiere of Hans Neuenfels's new production of Lohengrin last Sunday, ... ... promising) conducting, there was nothing but acclaim for the principal artists. Jonas Kaufmann is the benchmark Lohengrin of our time, but quite unlike any of recent memory: darkly Italianate in timbre, but capable of an almost Mozartian sensibility in his mezza voce, he sang his self-revealing narration as if in a religious trance, rapt, ethereal, rising thrillingly to his description of the Grail. A matchless performance. Annette Dasch's glassy-toned ...