I AM IN LOVE
I have been a huge fan of operatic tenors for nearly all of 75 years. I own numerous recordings of the great operatic recordings from "live from the Met" which I started listening to when I was about 12 or 14 years. Carreras and Domingo have been my favorite for years. I was looking thru "operatic tenors" on Amazon music when I listened to the recording of Jonas Kaufmann and I am as smitten as I was when I was a romantic teen. What a wonderful voice!!! Would love to hear him record some of "Phantom of the Opera" music, some of the Mario Lanza songs like "This Is My Beloved". Besides having a great, wonderful voice, he is pretty neat to look at also.

This tenor is the real deal.
Never mind what the "Grammphone" said in its excerpt for this album. The first track from "La Boheme" is very neatly done,and the rest of the tracks all offer 'better than most' performances.
The middle register is very full and powerful. The upper register sounds like laser. Wonderful intonation, immaculate articulation.
Musicality of the top caliber - never sings nonsense, but with full commitment to each aria's differing requirements.
This is a top-notch artist, blessed with a wonderful voice.
Miss this, and you will regret.

A Great CD
I thoroughly enjoy this CD. Kaufmann has a wonderful voice. He joins a group of very talented tenors.

Greatest tenor in 30 years (since Pavarotti)
I am writing this to support the rave reviews others have given this recital album as well as to express astonishment on the others who heavily criticized the disk. I have heard Kaufmann once live earlier this year at the Met. I must admit that he is the finest male voice (and actor) I have heard in 30 years--and that included some very fine singers. Only a few like M. Alvarez, Hampson, Terfel are really in his league. He may lack that Italianate squillo but he has the Germanic version of that wonderful Vickers "ping." He seemed very comortable in all the languanges and genres on this album. Ironically he seemed no more comfortable in German that in Italian or French. And I don't consider that criticism.

Finally, a young spinto tenor, and the trick is to preserve that wonderful voice.
How 'young' is Mr Kaufmann? May be 38, or 39. By this age, the voice has clearly begun to settle into a more baritonal spinto tenor.
There is no need to downrate this wonderful singer simply because he is a spinto - opera goers all know how precious such a genre of tenor is - even if you are a diehard JDF or RV fan.
Kaufmann's voice is totally different from them. Given his recent rise to international fame, he will definitely be offered a diverse performing contract by opera houses. However, such versatility is not something to his credit per se: some roles in this recording, notably Alfredo, is simply not his best. Luckily he has not included Belmonte or Tamino or Octavio or Fernando in this album. If he 'used' to excel in such roles, well, let them be counted as wonderful past performances. The caveat is to preserve the voice for the truly 'great' roles that suits him from this date onwards - the spinto roles.
Have you ever heard Vickers sighing away in La Traviata? Come on, leave this signature role of bushy-eyebrows to where it belongs, and deftly follow the footsteps of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau before: confine the voice to its best-suited repertoire.
The musical world would thank a thousand times over for it.