Exclusive interview with JONAS KAUFMANN
http://www.operafocus.com/jonaskaufmann2.htm
Jonas Kaufmann was born in Munich, Germany,
in 1969. He grew up listening to his parents' collection of classical music and
attending operas in Munich
with his older sister. In other words, it wasn't necessarily an unnatural
development for him to do a major in music at school and be a part of various
choruses from primary school onwards. What may have been more of a surprising
turn was his decision to study mathematics after he was advised by his parents
to do something sensible to fall back on to support a family. He did as he was
told but soon realised that numbers wasn't really his thing and made the
decision in 1989 to take the chance and study singing at the Academy of Music
and Theatre in Munich.