A voice for the gods

摘要

WHY the Three Tenors but not the Three Sopranos? Why is Caruso seen as pioneering the gramophone record and not Nellie Melba, who instead gave her name to a dish of peaches and cream? Why are tenors regarded almost mystically as a class apart? Opening his book with questions like these, Thomas Voigt, a journalist, film-maker and voice coach, seeks to explain the cult of Jonas Kaufmann, before asking what makes him tick. Born and brought up in Munich, this German tenor has made a smooth ascent. Inducted into the mysteries of Wagner by his music-loving grandfather, he gravitated to music via school choir and work as a teenage extra in staged operettas. Operatic bit parts and training with first-class tutors in music college led to a grindingly tough spell in the state theatre of Saarbriicken, where he was called on to sing all tenor roles while also studying ballet and fencing. When his voice suddenly dried up in the middle of "Parsifal" he thought of giving it all up. Now he knows why that happened: trying to produce the "German sound", he had not let his voice flow freely.