Notre Dame: Carnegie Hall - Leon Botstein & American Symphony Orchestra
As Gringoire, the husband Esmeralda doesn't love, Robert Chafin also showed compelling dramatic involvement, singing with a naturally attractive, almost conversational tenor that made him easy to sympathize with (and to understand).
Opera News
Tenor Robert Chafin was a solid Gringoire, making the most of miles of text and spiky, unattractive vocal lines befitting the character.
musicalcriticism.com
Daphne: New York City Opera
Few operas have two leading tenors as does "Daphne," and Roger Honeywell, a Canadian making his City Opera debut as the ardent Leukippos, and Robert Chafin, a Virginian with an international career also making his City Opera debut as Apollo, rise to the occasion. Chafin is particularly impressive in singing long heroic passages and looking every bit an overbearing deity who is used to getting what he wants.
United Press International
Idomeneo - Wupperthaler Bühnen
...Music, coming from wonderful voices and a superb sounding Orchestra. And that was overwhelmingly successful. Robert Chafin portrayed the role of Idomeneo impressively.
Theater Pur Magazin
In the role of Idomeneo we heard the stylistic and beautful tenor of Robert Chafin.
Opera Gazet
Die Aegyptiche Helena - Deutsche Oper Berlin
Menelas, like so many Strauss tenor roles, is a punishing and thankless part, yet Robert Chafin — another American artist — gave the Spartan king a vocally convincing and dramatically compelling performance that cut through the thicket of female voices: his work was so brazen that he not only held his own against Merbeth and Aikin but seemed to be waging war against Strauss's disdain for the male voice.
Opera News
“… Menelas is another brute of a tenor role, such as Strauss was wont to come up with. In spite of an announcement having been made, Robert Chafin was up to it all the way, and that included an exposed, prolonged high C. …”
Opera Magazine UK
Robert Chafin portrayed Menelas with intensity and a strong tenor voice, shading the Character of Menelas, as a soldier returning home from War, who only through dealing with his pain, finds his way back into his life.
Stuttgarter Zeitung
Richard Strauss admitted in the last years of his life that he never learned how one wrote for the
Tenor voice, and reflected on the ungrateful role of Menelas. The actual needed mix of Richard Tauber and Lauritz Melchior is nowhere to be found. The fact that Robert Chafin was able to get through this part earns our respect and is a huge accomplishment. And he did this with a beautiful and melodic lyric voice.
Deutshchland Radio
Robert Chafin attacked the role of Avenger and loving husband returning from the Trojan War with unbelievable and never tiring vigor in his tenor voice, where he went crazy, but never lost his vocal focus. He (and the audience) puzzled along with sheer energy through the almost impossible story line.
Berliner Morgenpost
