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The Guardian, 18 October 2015 |
Erica Jeal |
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Puccini-Konzerte: London, Royal Festival Hall, 17.10.2015 |
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Jonas Kaufmann review – a golden voice and a golden smile
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As aria followed aria, with high-class orchestral interludes, the
tenor was on shining form for an evening of Puccini |
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If there is one voice that turns connoisseurs into starstruck fans, it is
Jonas Kaufmann’s tenor. The name alone sold out this recital with no
indication of what he would actually sing – though the fact that he has a
Puccini album out at the moment was a clue.
Kaufmann’s Puccini
evening had all the elements of the celebrity opera recital: the hiked-up
ticket prices, the expensive programme full of pictures of Kaufmann doing
Blue Steel. And the acres of orchestral filler – because no singer can go
from one Big Moment to another all night without recovery time. Here, at
least, it was high-class filler, from the London Philharmonic under Jochen
Rieder. Collectors of rarities will have enjoyed the early Preludio
sinfonico, with its aura of Lohengrin-like piety, and the whirling ghostly
dance from the little-known opera Le Villi, which put the orchestra on its
mettle.
As for the star, he was on shining form, spinning velvety
lines lower in the voice and then singing top notes so solid, so well
supported that you could use them to jack up a 10-ton truck. After numbers
from Le Villi and Edgar, another little-known opera, came the works in which
there is probably nobody to touch Kaufmann at the moment: Manon Lescaut, La
fanciulla del West. There was room for subtlety even in Nessun dorma, and a
beautifully tempered tail-off at the end of his first encore, Recondita
armonia from Tosca. Audience impatience had been such that they had barely
been able to sit through the orchestral introduction.
As aria
followed orchestral interlude followed aria, there was unavoidably a slight
conveyor-belt feeling. Only with the pensive final encore, Recife’s Era il
ciel, did Kaufmann break from the Puccini groove. But from the tenor with
the golden voice and the golden smile – liberally bestowed on everyone, even
those who clapped halfway through an aria and almost threw him off his
concentration – that was something all seemed happy to overlook.
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