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The Times, 26 October 2011 |
Neil Fisher |
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Konzert, London, Royal Festival Hall, 24. Oktober 2011 |
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Jonas Kaufmann at the Festival Hall
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This wasn’t just a concert. It was a manifesto. There is no other tenor
today apart from Jonas Kaufmann who could pull off such a diverse programme
of operatic arias, from Mascagni to Bizet to Wagner, and do it with such
flair. When the official programme finished, with the Grail Narration from
Lohengrin, it was almost as if divine approval had been bestowed not just on
Wagner’s messianic swan knight but on the German singer too. That
sounds like hyperbole, but Kaufmann brings extraordinary vocal and dramatic
gifts to the operatic table. True, his dark-toned tenor sounded a little
woody as it limbered up through Ponchielli’s Cielo e Mar. But soon oak
turned to mahogany as Kaufmann wrung every ounce of expression from several
very different heroes.
Romeo’s lament from Zandonai’s Giulietta e
Romeo, the rarity of the night, had verismo swagger without losing its
heartfelt anguish; Mascagni’s drunken and doomed Turiddu (from Cavalleria
Rusticana) sounded just like the foolish mummy’s boy he really is. In a
shamelessly seductive Flower Song from Carmen, meanwhile, Kaufmann
demonstrated his technical poise — as well as linguistic finesse in French —
lingering on a pianissimo climax where most tenors have to ramp up to forte
to stay in breath.
What makes Kaufmann’s Wagner special is that he
is able to maintain the same Italianate warmth, a quality that shone through
Siegmund’s glorious hailing of the spring, Winterstürme, as well as
Lohengrin’s climactic narration. Four generous encores then swivelled
beguilingly between more verismo and Richard Tauber’s unashamedly schmaltzy
Du bist die Welt für mich (You Are the World for Me), which many in the
audience took as a direct message.
This could and should have been
a five-star evening. But in their wisdom, the soloist and promoter (Raymond
Gubbay) had settled on a conductor to lead the Royal Philharmonic with an
unerring ability to turn the most rip-roaring piece — the Bacchanale from
Saint-Saëns’s Samson, the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana — into a
finger-gnawingly tedious interlude. To call Jochen Rieder’s tempos
hearse-paced would be an insult to a funeral cortège. Add a glossy six-quid
programme riddled with typos, without song texts, but stuffed full of
identical pictures of the soloist, and you have room for improvement.
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