[Villazon] successfully negotiates the exposed or awkward passages. In the bigger singing of the third act...there's a touch of the old, devil-may-care Villazon...Even better is [Koch's Charlotte]...But what seems most likely to allow this recording to enter the lists of classic interpretations is Antonio Pappano's conducting...revealing the score's stresses and strains while deftly conveying its momentum.

Tingling with nervous intensity, Villazon's Werther is alive at every moment in the mind's eye...Aside from Villazon, the strongest personality in the cast is Antonio Pappano, who gets detailed playing from the orchestra. This is Massenet with an Italianate cut but his sense of drama is second to none, rising to white heat at the climax of that fateful Christmas Eve meeting.

Villazon's style of singing Massenet is distinctly Latin...his characterization of the part, which benefits greatly from the live stage production and Pappano's breathtakingly theatrical conducting...strikes me as uniquely compelling, even if his singing is not scrupulous stylistically...[Pappano] brings both a Wagnerian sound and Tchaikovskian volatility...I will return to this set as often for Pappano as I will for Villazon.

[Villazon] is fresh in tone and, most important of all, his half-voice is still in marvellous shape. Few if any present-day tenors have such an array of nuance. Villazon applies this with the music and text in mind, not to show off his technically impressive diminuendo... Anyone buying his/her first Werther who chooses the present one will, I’m convinced, fall in love with both the work and the artists.

for the most part, [Villazón's] moments of wildness and vocal fragility work beautifully in the service of this most unstable of characters...Koch’s elegantly-sung, restrained Charlotte, shatteringly expressive when her guard eventually drops in the letter-scene, is an ideal foil for Villazón’s volatile hero...A third star performance comes from the pit; when I put the CD on, I was pinned back by the verismo-like drama at the searingly gloomy opening.

[Villazon's] performance here — impassioned, poetic, both thrillingly extrovert and poignantly introverted — banishes most of the demons that have plagued him ...Pappano lets the Wagnerian orchestration rip in the interludes.

Villazón dies spectacularly well, navigating the arc from infatuation to despair to determination. Sophie Koch excels as the remorseful Charlotte...Not a dry eye in the house.

Pappano keeps authoritative control over the temperature gauge throughout and never lets the emotions boil over into abject melodrama... in the last act [Villazon's] singing is coloured by a desperate sincerity which would melt the hardest heart.

Villazón is back where he’s seen at his best...he throws himself right inside the torments of Werther...you’ll either be irritated or charmed by Villazón’s rather cobwebbed habit of sliding upward toward key notes...But there are also numerous times when the subtlety and beauty of his vocal effects take the breath away...Villazón’s ardour finds its match in Antonio Pappano’s conducting. He never shrinks from the luscious ache in Massenet’s music

The role of the orchestra is brilliantly realised in Antonio Pappano's performance...Sophie Koch's Charlotte persuades but Roland Villazón's hypersensitive Werther has more sob than suavity.

There’s no one better [than Pappano] at glossing over the piece’s longueurs...buy this set for the white-hot orchestral playing. Brief orchestral interludes erupt with colour under Pappano and the score’s fruitier outbursts are incandescent