Robert Dean Smith is the new boy on the block where Heldentenors are concerned‚ and on this evidence‚ very impressive he is too. Indeed‚ as the disc progressed I became more rather than less admiring of his solidly produced‚ strong voice and his eminently musical way of employing his talent. It is‚ after all‚ no mean feat to sing 77 minutes of such taxing music and‚ as it were‚ not put a note wrong. No wonder he is already in demand worldwide. He makes a handsome‚ unflinching Walther‚ traversing the high tessitura of the Prize song with uncommon ease. The four solos from Die Walküre all evince a deal of concern and/or passion as they should‚ and again line and tone are virtually immaculate. Much if not quite all (how could it be otherwise‚ singing these roles out of context?) of his Tannhäuser and his Parsifal sound the right touch of anguish and‚ in the case of the latter’s ‘Nur eine Waffe’‚ nobility. Rienzi and Lohengrin are characterised in turn with a true feeling for their situations. In all these roles‚ Smith manages to match or surpass the excellence of Heppner among his transatlantic coevals‚ and from the not­so­distant past that of James King‚ to whose reliable tenor Smith’s bears an uncanny resemblance. He is not helped by a lacklustre‚ over­cautious conductor‚ but in other circumstances one can imagine him as something of a saviour in an operatic world starved of his kind.