But Kaufmann doesn’t try anything like that. He attempts a sort of mezzo piano attack on the A-flat. Alma’s friend reports that he cracked all but once in the performances he heard, wonders why he would keep on trying it, and proposes that Kaufmann has a “significant hole just below (and reaching into) the passaggio” and is thus unable “to keep his voice piano when passing—well, the passaggio. Thus,” he continues, “I guess the approach all the others (Del Monaco, Corelli, Pavarotti, Domingo, etc.) used will not work for him.”

Well: Let’s stipulate first that, as noted above, Kaufmann’s aesthetic is a modern one, probably influenced by conductors and coaches and perhaps by forays into musicological readings. He believes he should sing what’s written, and he’s not a big portamento guy. And second, that F is a problematic note for many tenors, and Kaufmann might not be able to play with it in the way we’d most desire. But if we are positing a hole, we really need evidence that the segment just below the passaggio disintegrates, sags in pitch, distorts the vowels, gets hoarse, or is in some other way consistently dysfunctional. A few “springboard” examples, or the choice to refrain from a traditional rewrite, is not enough. And throughout the rest of the duet, in the Munich and Vienna performances (he and Harteros both sound in better voice on the former, I think), Kaufmann navigates a good deal of writing in the third between C and E, and then the last “fino alla morte” just before the jump to B-flat on “insiem” (taking a perfectly OK G-flat on “la,” at a controlled dynamic, in the process), without any undue difficulty that I can hear. It’s not my favorite timbre for this music, but it’s not a voice with a hole in it.

And anyway, what about this tradition of portamentoed F to A-flat? I thought it would be fun to check it out. I didn’t re-hear Domingo or Pavarotti, both excellent singers, but part of the lighter calibration of recent decades. It happens that I came to know Andrea Chénier via the Gigli recording (1941, with Caniglia, Bechi, and that stunning trio of “comprimarii”: Simionato, Taddei, and Tajo, under de Fabritiis), which I must have heard thirty times before seeing my first live performances with the Met revival of 1954-55. Then, however, we had within the space of a few seasons Del Monaco, Tucker, Bergonzi, and Corelli, along with a few lesser lights. I did not hear Bergonzi in this role, and haven’t come across any recording of his, but the rest I can report on. Del Monaco is interesting, because he does it differently on each of the three versions I re-heard. With de Sabata at La Scala in 1949, he begins with “Ah” on the F in his idiosyncratic version of mezza-voce. But of course his “Ah” is not open—it’s dark, deep, and closed-in; in effect, he’s already above the break. He then moves up to the A-flat, but pretty much in tempo, so it doesn’t create any special moment; it just begins the passage. On the studio recording with Gavazzeni (1957) he takes the same approach, but to better effect, with more of a hold for the set-up and the upper note blooming a bit on the downbeat. But in the Met performance (1954, under Cleva), he actually takes the F on the “O-” of “Ora,”—just an intensification of his shade of “Ah“— and carries that up, securing lovelier overtones. It’s the best of his efforts.