The distinctive repertoire was planned by Thomas Voigt – not a trawl through predictable encores but a look at the Berlin decade 1925 35 in operetta and film hits, numbers made famous by the tenors Richard Tauber, Joseph Schmidt and Jan Kiepura. This gives us not only later Lehár but also the still undervalued Kálmán plus Stolz, Hans May, Paul Abraham and a relevant drop-in of the big duet from Korngold’s Die tote Stadt. There are also bonuses. While the CD under review here has six of the numbers sung in what I’d like to call Tauber-English (plus a further ‘Dein ist mein ganzes Herz’ in French), in order to get the full Jonas you can pay more for a multi-disc version with all numbers in their original German plus DVD of an accompanying concert.

It should be wonderful – and it sometimes is. Kaufmann certainly has the vocal range to deliver both the heroics of Künneke’s ‘Lied vom Leben des Schrenk’ and the close-to-the-mic smooch of Abraham’s ‘Diwanpüppchen’ (in duet with Julia Kleiter). But he sounds at times uncertain of what emotional line to take. Interpreters such as Tauber, or today’s Max Raabe, have always made firm decisions about being ironic or just plain raunchy with this material. ‘Girls were made to love and kiss’ – in the now censored English version of Lehár’s Paganini showstopper – is a case in point where the ‘who am I to interfere with this?’ refrain surely should carry some male innuendo. Except phonetically, Kaufmann (recreating Tauber’s internationalism) does not always match the saucy cool of the originals in these translated numbers: they’re a bit neutral, carefully read from the page.

I imagine the concert versions will be better and rather regret that the whole recital was not taken live. But nobody in this country – where we still get a hundred Merry Widows to one Frasquita or Paganini, and Viktoria und ihr Husar and Robert Stolz are still dreams on LP sleeves – should be put off a chance to hear such repertoire so well sung.