Although he does not sound very Italian, Kaufmann draws strength from staying true to himself, a gloriously bronze-voiced German tenor, welding musicianship with smouldering emotion...Pappano and his Santa Cecilia orchestra fire up every track with native Italian passion.

Kaufmann's reassuringly expensive-sounding voice finding luxurious and ardent support from Antonio Pappano and his Santa Cecilia Orchestra…Dick Johnson suits his poetico-heroic manner well…and there are few quibbles with Kaufmann in the title track, delivered (as the disc's finale) with his trademark purring, mahogany-tinged tone and rising to a ringing top B

Kaufmann may be an artist capable of immense interpretative subtlety, but as with his earlier discs of Verismo and Verdi he never short-changes in terms of the heart-on-sleeve theatricality that so much of this music demands...You'd have to try pretty hard, I think, not to enjoy this disc immensely, at least if you modify your memory to erase any traces of Pavarotti...Puccini's tenor writing is often associated with a rather more 'golden' sound than Kaufmann's essentially coppery one, but once you adjust to that everything's glorious.

All the operas (except the all-female Suor Angelica) are represented, ending with a pinging, thrilling Nessun Dorma. It’s as far from Pavarotti as you can get, yet still captures the essence of Puccini.

On stage he is remarkably invested in character and text, in other words in being somebody else rather than himself. The best of Nessun Dorma — and Kaufmann’s best is peerless — shows how well he can do that even on record, assisted by the vivid playing of the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome under Antonio Pappano.

With its smoky sheen, earthy colorings and heft, the German tenor Jonas Kaufmann’s voice may not seem born to the red-sauce Puccini idiom. But he brings abundant lyricism and exciting ardor to this intelligent program.