Jonas Kaufmann’s record label guards the German tenor’s every breath like an angry goose sitting on a golden egg. Its feathers will therefore have been ruffled by a cheeky recording of clips from two early Kaufmann recordings of rare operas, Marschner’s Der Vampyr from 1828 and Johann Abert’s Ekkehard (1878).
Both works are interesting waymarks in the history of German romantic opera — the Marschner influenced Wagner, whose Lohengrin and Tannhäuser scores then loom rather heavily over Abert’s opera. Yet both have fairly baffling stories about self-denying young men battling the lure of evil or sex (or both).
However, since the chunks spliced together by Capriccio focus on Kaufmann’s performances as Aubry in the Marschner and in the title role of Ekkehard, you can attempt to ignore the plot and — in the midst of some B-grade music mostly sung by B-grade singers — focus on the freshness and bloom of Kaufmann’s voice, caught long before his career went supernova and both men and women would be hurling their underwear at him at the Last Night of the Proms. (Capriccio)