“I am young, and I love life” sings Eléazar in Halévy’s La
Juive. The world’s most in-demand tenor, Jonas Kaufmann, may no
longer be in his first youth, but in this collection of
19th-century French opera arias he looks back to the early years
of his career and the roles that made him. The result is an
album with a curious double narrative – following opera’s
development from Halévy in the 1830s through to Massenet in the
1890s, as well as Kaufmann’s own evolution from these bright,
ardent early roles to the more muscular heroism of his current
repertoire.
Scan down the list of arias on L’Opéra and
you’ll see a recording that really, really shouldn’t work. Where
else would Berlioz’s Enée find himself sharing the bill with
Wilhelm Meister from Ambroise Thomas’s Mignon? The scope here is
astonishing – from feather-light French comedy to heroic epic –
and the only thing more astonishing is that it actually works.
Kaufmann’s recent projects for Sony have been rather
eclectic. What started with albums of Wagner and Verdi has
latterly taken something of a scenic route via German operetta
and Italian popular songs, so it’s a pleasure to find that this
exuberant, greedy collection of repertoire feels so plausible –
showcasing a voice and a singer who has earned the right to sing
what he chooses.
Kaufmann’s personal relationship with
many of these roles gives us a playlist that carves a pleasingly
unorthodox path through the period, giving us the greatest hits
(Manon, Werther, Carmen and Hoffmann) but also curiosities or
one-aria wonders like Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys and Meyerbeer’s
L’Africaine. If it sometimes feels like using a sledgehammer to
crack open a nut, it’s also a delightful extravagance to hear
Kaufmann’s husky, baritonal beast of a voice crooning his way
through Thomas’s Vainement, ma bien-aimée, Elle ne croyait pas,
dans sa candeur naïve or (loveliest of all) Des Grieux’s
heart-stopping En fermant les yeux. His head-voice pianissimos
are beautifully controlled, as he demonstrates in the thrilling
delicacy of the close to Faust’s Merci, doux crépuscule, and the
legato lines we’ve sometimes heard neglected in favour of
moment-to-moment drama on earlier recordings here find much
better balance.
But delightful though Kaufmann’s trip
down memory lane is, the biggest thrills here come from the
bigger roles, where the tenor’s added heft and muscularity can
come into play. His Werther (gloriously supported by Bertrand de
Billy and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester) is properly Byronic
and hot-blooded, while his Enée is a more startling triumph for
a voice which has little natural squillo. With Sonya Yoncheva
and Ludovic Tézier offering some very classy cameos, this really
is the best disc we’ve heard from Kaufmann since his outstanding
Winterreise.
