Opera Now, October 2013

Francis Muzzu

Jonas Kaufmann: The Verdi Album

As Kaufmann tours his Don Carlo around Europe, offers his first Manrico and Alvaro in Munich and promises Otello, this is a timely release and one that should increase the sense of excitement about the tenor, here making his recording debut with Sony, having recently moved over from Decca. Always a sensitive interpreter, possessed of a distinctive voice with exciting glints of metal through the smoke, Kaufmann is on top form throughout. His Radames and Manrico are yearning, his Duke of Mantua and Ballo Riccardo fleet and elegant, his Macduff plangent. The two Otello excerpts really do whet the appetite. Perhaps best of all is his Luisa Miller Rodolfo, so beautifully sung that it makes one truly regret the omission of this role from his repertoire. Each character is carefully delineated and there is a great sense of intellect behind arias that are often throwaway party pieces performed out of context. Pier Giorgio Morandi's conducting of the Orchestra dell'Opera di Parma provides good support.