At one point in the second act of Massenet’s Werther, the heroine’s sister Sophie tells the eponymous hero, sung by Jonas Kaufmann, widely acclaimed as the greatest tenor of our time: “it’s you everyone wants to see”. And so they do: we were all there to see and hear Kaufmann take the role of the lovesick, melancholy poet.
The singer, alas, has had vocal problems for some years now, and they have clearly not gone away. By the end of the second act many were wondering aloud whether they would ever again hear the German tenor as he was in his prime. In those first two acts he managed little more than the half-voice croon that has become familiar in recent years. With Werther’s rival, Albert – Gordon Bintner in fine voice – and the role of his lover Charlotte taken by Aigul Akhmetshina – a former Jette Parker singer of enormous potential – Kaufmann was in danger of being eclipsed.
