Two posts ago, I expressed some cautious optimism at the prospect of a Kaufmann Tristan. There’s a long way to go, in every sense, but it sounds like the material is there, and we could sure use a good Tristan. The question at this point is what else the material is good for. The voice as re-calibrated has always had an odd conformation—odd, that is, for a voice that works well. Now, the dark coloration has grown darker, the texture thicker. Tenorial ring still comes through at the top, but in a heftier, more compressed setting. In the Tristan outing, the voice seemed well settled into these relationships, quite at home. Afterward, I took an extended listen to his recent French aria collection (L’Opéra, on Sony, with de Billy and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester), which I’d only sampled previously. It’s not a very pleasurable disc. For one thing, if Kaufmann was going to record this repertoire, the time was certainly some five to ten years ago. For another, I’m finding it more and more difficult to hear out the NowGen version of a great-sounding studio recording. There’s a deadness at the center of the experience they offer, compounded of a creepy absence of acoustic (even, as here, on recordings made in halls rather than studios), bloated dynamic range (bring back dynamic compression!), the phony presence and intimacy of close miking, and, I have to assume, the post-production fiddlings and matchings that create a simulacrum of continuity, so different from the real-world, living-human kind.

So here is Kaufmann, with the evermore Stygian timbre and increasingly dense, fibrous, texture of what we must now class as his bariténor fort et sombré, laid out for clinical examination in music that, for the most part, cries out for tonal clarity, buoyancy of handling,  and suppleness of line. There’s a built-in incompatibility to this match-up. I’ve tried take a cue from a fellow Met standee of the ’50s, whom I queried about his grudging applause for a singer he’d initially booed lustily. “I’m getting used to the sound now,” he explained. “He does some good things.” So I’ve re-listened, in search of accustomization. But it’s as if clarinet repertoire had been assigned to bassoon and, somehow, without transposition. For there’s nothing Kaufmann can’t surmount, in his fashion. The results verge on the grotesque in a piece like the defenseless little aubade from Le Roi d’Ys or even Wilhelm Meister’s “Elle ne croyait pas,” but it can’t be said that these are just being shouted—Kaufmann has his version of the softer dynamics, and makes many of the lyrical gestures implied by the music. The upper range at full voice makes a brave effect. It’s now too brave at times—the passionate peak of Hoffmann’s “O Dieu, de quelle ivresse” sounds like the climax of the Otello Oath Duet. Still, in the appropriate spots, there’s no gainsaying a gut excitement, as with the big endings of “O souverain” and “Rachel, quand du Seigneur.” A shame that Sony, given its investment in quality duet partners (Yoncheva, Tézier), didn’t spring for some chorus so that Kaufmann could have given us the Juive continuation, “Dieu m’éclaire.” That might have raised our hair a bit, and would have told us if Kaufmann still has the C he will need for his Calaf, opposite Cecilia.