This 2023
Warner Classics release is something of a throwback to opera's golden age on recordings, with an all-star cast brought into a studio rather than recorded on stage. No doubt a lot of executives will be watching to see how it does, and it is quite likely that they are going to like what they see, especially inasmuch as the album made classical best-seller lists in early 2023. There is a great deal to like here.
Jonas Kaufmann lacks -- or perhaps avoids -- the blazing tone of a
Pavarotti in the lead role of the prince Calaf, but his "Nessun dorma" is warm and perfectly controlled, just gorgeous.
Kaufmann, in this style, turns into a foil for the slashing soprano of
Sondra Radvanovsky in an extraordinary performance. There are pleasures among the smaller roles as well; baritone
Michael Spyres has been hitting his stride and makes a convincingly powerful emperor, but the real star of the show may be conductor
Antonio Pappano, whose grasp of the edgy, grim score suggests new directions
Puccini might have taken had he lived, is impressive from the very beginning. He does not linger anywhere; the music proceeds inexorably. His brass from the
Orchestra dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia are beautifully drilled harbingers of doom. His control is all the more impressive in that the recording was made in 2021 under COVID social distancing, but perhaps this added to the intensity. Another draw here is that
Pappano is one of very few conductors to choose
Franco Alfano's original completion of the opera, rejected and truncated by
Arturo Toscanini into the version that is more commonly performed; he makes a strong case for the earlier version, in which the end of the opera seems to land with added dramatic weight. Listeners can make their own decisions, but it is certainly worth hearing. This is a major new recording of
Puccini's operatic swan song. ~ James Manheim
