Before Jonas Kaufmann, there hasn't been a German tenor to make as big a splash in Italian repertoire since Frederick Jagel.
I know I know, Jagel was from Brooklyn, but come on, this is a guy who clearly grew up speaking German in his house. If Anna Moffo can be Italian Frederick Jagel can be German. And I know, German opera houses sang Italian opera in German until the sixties and there were all kinds of German singers who specialized in Italian repertoire, but Jagel was almost unique for his time in singing Italian repertoire in Italian.
There is an occasional hint of that stereotypical German bark, and yet just listen. This is a tenor who, for whatever reason, learned everything from Caruso, down to the atomic level. It may be an act of grand impersonation, but what an impersonation! What other way were non-Italians going to learn Italian style in the 1930s?
It's traditional wisdom that performers shouldn't learn anything from other performers because you might copy the other performer's mannerisms. But listen to the results - so often performers, particularly opera singers, are like blank slates. They don't know how to make the music come alive because they've rarely ever heard musicians who can.
I would advise performers to listen to recordings, and not just one recording.... Listening to one recording is damaging, listening to a dozen is an education. Whenever you're not practicing, listen to as many previous interpreters as you can, because you need to hear the range of interpretive possibilities. This recording shows that there are much worse sins out there than plagiarizing an interpretation. You're not standup comics, what you are is a medium through which the composer speaks; but the composer does not only speak through the score, they speak through the oral tradition, and the oral tradition can only be assimilated by hearing those who know it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYtAfSxZ674&fbclid=IwAR2DRxuhb08yU28FbUTVO8P-NkFQCvP2MiybbzYyIGVK4zdnEgULTBPxUZQ
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