This is an exciting disc, for it shows that at long last there is a German tenor whose voice is rich and warm enough to encompass the Romantic Italian reportoire, while being as much at home in French and in his native German operatic traditions. He is, in other words, a successor to Fritz Wunderlich and more besides. Possibly the high point is his singing of the 'Prize Song' from Die Meistersinger, which sounds as if it is being composed as he sings it...

The more delicate critical constitutions among us will recoil at the very idea of there being any- thing so distasteful as a World's Top Tenor, but were such a position available and the title to be competed for, there would probably be no stronger candidate at the present time than Jonas Kaufmann.
Kaufmann's voice, warm and full–bodied in its middle register, has an excitingly brilliant top. It has a Latin richness, and the elements are well integrated. The German component (his home town is Munich, though you might have thought Vienna more likely) accounts for the broader musicianship that shapes his phrases and fashions his tone as an instrument sensitive to modulations of sense and sound. The recital opens with Rodolfo's La bohème narrative, and fine as that is, the Flower Song from Carmen, which follows, is still better. Deeply touching in the sincerity of its appeal, it is nevertheless offered as song, its lyrical inviolate, the B flat of 'et j'étais une chose à toi', a climax not of volume but of devoted tenderness. And the recorded sound catches him most truly in this. Along with the Rigoletto, Don Carlos and Manon arias, it brings him before us as remembered 'in the flesh', whereas elsewhere some element in the tonal balance (an over–insistence on upper frequencies perhaps) somehow blurred the individuality.
The Traviata disappoints: too heroic in the recitative, almost completely unsmiling in the aria (he should hear Gigli). For the most part, though, this recital is a triumph.

Were the position of World's Top Tenor available, there may be no stronger candidate at present than Kaufmann. For the most part this recital is a triumph.

One of the most important, and versatile, singers of our age