THE DIVINE TRANSFORMATION OF
JONAS KAUFMANN, TENOR OF THE MOMENT
http://www.jkaufmann.info/interview_english/juanAntonio_en.htm
There is no major opera
theater that does not wish to have him among its artists. He signs contracts
for performances and CDs five or more years in advance.
He started with roles for
light-lyric tenor and some Mozart roles, went on with Puccini, Verdi and
Massenet, and it has now become a usual sight to see him in Beethoven and
Wagner roles. Sigmund, Eneas, Othello and Tristan lie around the corner.
Juan Antonio Muñoz H.
From Bayreuth
The Jonas Kaufmann phenomenon
has caused a whirlwind in the operatic world. The 41-year old tenor from Munich has become a star
which no major theater can do without, who is adored by thousands of fans and
has critics at his feet. His is a rare case, for many reasons: possibly his
transformation from light-lyric tenor to dramatic tenor is unique in the
history of opera. No other great tenor since Franco Corelli has had the noble
bearing of Kaufmann. To which we may add rarely seen histrionic gifts and a
profound knowledge of the various styles he performs. He is a family man (married
to the mezzo, Margarete Joswig, with whom he has three children), practices
yoga, is a Protestant Christian and talking to him is just like talking to an
old friend.
His latest great triumphs
started in December 2009, when he opened the season of the Scala of Milan with
a staging of “Carmen” (Bizet) which seemed to focus itself more on the story of
Don José than on that of the gipsy girl. He throws the scene totally out of
balance without even intending to do so, as his performance is always introverted,
more inspired than histrionic. His “Werther” last January in Paris belonged to the same style. There he
delivered a devilish fiato and an obscure material which, all the same, did not
prevent him from transmitting poignant subtleties. His last act was not only a
masterpiece of technical control, but also a display of emotion which almost
causes neurovegetative disorders when describing the state of a dying man who
sings while expiring, with extreme modesty and shyness. A lesson in moderation
which some have compared to that of the legendary Georges Thill in this role.
And in August, he performed “Lohengrin” (Wagner) in Bayreuth, where his
character triumphed over a controversial staging (Hans Neuenfels filled the
stage with human rats), as he bewitched everyone by making of the hero who
invokes silence at once a bittersweet, intense, robust and delicate potion.
The breadth of the crescendo,
the internal vibration of each uttered word, the multiple pitch, the torrid
sensuousness which becomes lyrical purity, the huge voice range and his
presence on the stage leads everyone to wonder whether there is anything that
Kaufmann is not capable of singing.
An art which is consistent
with that of Fritz Wunderlich (1930-1966), a tenor whom he admires and who died
prematurely three years before Kaufmann was born. There are some who sustain
that he is his reincarnation: Tamino (“The Magic Flute”), “Dichterliebe”
(Schumann) and “Die Schöne Müllerin” (Schubert) are some of his coincidences in
terms of repertoire.
“THE RISK IN SINGING IS VERY
GREAT”
—How did your arrival to
music produce itself? Were you encouraged by your family or did it happen
spontaneously?
“Everyone loved classical music and opera at
home, but nobody was a musician. They all played the piano as a hobby, but not
professionally. I always sung at home and also in choirs. I always did that and
I can’t remember not doing it. When I was about 14 or 15 years old, I started
singing short solos; two or three phrases in a cantata or in an oratorio, but I
never thought of it as a profession. It was always a beautiful hobby. When this
started to take another shape, my father used to tell me: ‘You are a family man
and if you want to have a family of your own, you will also need a more
profound work...’ ’’.
—Was he right?
“Yes, indeed. The risk in singing is very
great. I notice it, for instance, in the people who studied with me; only a few
of them are able at least to survive. It is not a life of luxury. There are
many, besides, who after studying singing have had to start all over again to
obtain another profession. It is really risky.”
—Is that why you started
studying Mathematics?
“Yes. My father worked in an insurance company
and he started me off in that direction. But that was not for me, everything
was too theoretical and dry. In mathematics you talk about things but you never
do anything. During the time I studied I never once saw a figure. It was just
theory. I cannot sit still all day, theorizing. While studying Mathematics, I
went on with my singing lessons because I needed them.”
—How do you manage now that
your face is known to everyone, even to people who know nothing about opera?
“It is something special and a bit difficult
because people look at you, make comments and treat you in another way, above
all in places where I have sung a lot, like Zürich’’.
—Do you still live there?
“No, I was there for 7 years and now I have
returned to Bavaria.
From the next season on, I will no longer be doing things in Zürich, a place
which was very important for me as there I was able to test out titles that
have been key titles in my career. It is a small theater where everything works
perfectly. But now my schedule is so full and concentrated in a few places —the
MET, London, the Scala, Paris,
Vienna and
München, essentially— that I decided to reestablish myself back in my
country.’’
“I HAVE NOT MADE THESE CHILDREN IN ORDER NOT
TO BE WITH THEM”
—You were born in München
and, strangely enough, that is where, since a short while ago, you steadfastly
appear.
“It keeps happening in Germany that first you have to make
yourself known outside the country to be summoned by our major theaters. It is
true that during 15 years I did little in München, but from now on many of my
plans have changed. Since 2009 and in the future I will often sing there. I
will make each year a new production and retrieve another one. Everyone tells
me that, from a tax point of view, it is madness to return to Germany! But I love my country, its
people … in short, I am German. Besides, I have many things scheduled in Berlin, Bayreuth and Salzburg…”.
—Are your children always with you?
“Yes and no. Now they are with me because it
is summer, but when they are at school I cannot take them with me everywhere I
go. They are three, furthermore, and it is not easy. It is also hard to
schedule performances which do not require being away from home a long time.
But I have not made these children in order not to be with them. Family has
always been very important to me and also having an internal stability, a
foundation so as not to become wild with success. It gets harder and harder to
remain oneself, to keep on being the same without changing because something
around one is changing.”
—It is easy to take the other
road …
“Very much so. It is easy, but finally the
problem is, in my opinion, that everything gets spoiled. Because the singing
quality also depends on calmness, deepness and stability, of feeling content
with yourself. Once you get out of yourself to live something else, it is very
hard to get back. You no longer find the way.”
“IT IS DIFFERENT DRIVING A TOPOLINO THAN A
40-TON TRUCK”
—How does one live through
such a radical change of voice as yours? You started singing some Mozart roles
and others like Flavio (“Norma”) and Cassio (“Othello”), and now we have you
singing “Lohengrin”, “Werther” and we may already think of you as Othello and,
why not, as Tristan.
“It is true. In 1995 I started to change my
technique completely. Until then I had sung as a very light tenor. It wasn’t
even a lyrical tenor, it was really very, very light...
—Luigi Alva...?
“Yes, yes, it was in that direction. And I had
great problems. I started to realize that my voice wasn’t able to stand that
lightness. It was very strange. I had problems and when I spoke with my
colleagues, they told me: ‘You are very young. Don’t stop, keep on singing very
light...’. I completely lost my starting point. Then I found a teacher who set
me on a completely different road. It was very important for me to discover my
real possibilities; he showed me an unknown route. All my colleagues of those
days thought that this would be the end, that my voice had been ruined, that it
was too dark... but I have been able to control that voice, which was at first
very hard to do. I could not take the line, the curves, everything was a bit
calante or very slow. One has to get used to it. It is different driving a
Topolino than a 40-ton truck...’’.
— Did you have to discover
that there was another voice or did your body become aware of it?
“My
voice grew and became darker. It was the voice itself that showed me the way,
but it was only when I discovered what to do with my body that I was able to
set free that voice. I did not intend becoming a tenor with body, a baritone...
When I started singing, I was always in the high notes, the in-between notes
did not exist, but, all the same, I had less than a two octave range … and now
I have three!”
—Who was that teacher?
“He is Michael Rhodes, an American baritone
from Brooklyn, who studied with Giuseppe de
Luca, a great Italian baritone from Caruso’s time, who has a splendid
technique. De Luca immigrated to the States during the war and he was the
teacher of my teacher.”
—Have you developed any
method to approach any given character?
“It is always different. There are characters
for which the opera is your only source of information so that you must
concentrate all your attention on the libretto and have to read very well what
is written in it to create a more credible character as regards the emotional
part. There are cases in which there are many sources, as Lohengrin, for
instance, who is in so many legends. One can read a lot and realize that the different
sources point to different things that will enrich the character. But one also
has to be careful about this because you may head in a different direction from
that of the libretto which has to be taken into account. The story of Lohengrin
in the legends is a different story: he marries Elsa and has children with her
before making the famous question. Thank God that Wagner cut all that...
Imagine what that would be like with the whole family and the opera lasting 10
hours! (Laughs). When you sing ‘Don Carlo’, you must know the real story and
read Schiller’s work where you can appreciate the character much better. In the
case of ‘Carmen’, Merimee’s story is quite different. Carmen is different, but
so is he. Don José is a character who has already gone wrong once before and
not the young, quiet and good man everybody thinks he is. He wants to be good
because this is his second chance, his second life after the crime he has
already committed. He has escaped from the criminal life he led before by going
to the military. This is something which makes much more credible the change
you notice in Bizet. There are many examples like this. It is easier to
discover interesting angles of a character if you know all the different
sources. I like to understand the human being that is in the role.”
—The “Carmen” which opened La
Scala in 2009 seemed to be telling the story of Don José rather than that of
Carmen.
“Yes, and it is the same with Merimée. It is
José who tells all that the night before his execution. He confesses all that
has happened, why it happened and tells Carmen’s story. But it is really about
his life. In Bizet you also notice that the one who really changes is Don José.
It is he who really develops. Carmen is a fixed character.”
LIEDER FOR YOUNG VOICES AND MINDS
—You have a very wide repertoire, which goes
from Monteverdi to Wagner and Strauss, the Italians, the French, as also the
world of the Lied. It is remarkable that among your first CDs you have one
completely dedicated to Richard Strauss and another one with Schubert’s “Die
Schöne Müllerin” cycle.
“I love the Lied and want to record as much as
I can of it. I liked the idea of starting with the ones I believe need a young
voice, and above all, a young mind. I’m already 41! Both ‘Dichterliebe’
(Schumann) and ‘Die Schöne Müllerin’ (Schubert) have young, inexperienced
‘characters’. It’s the only way in which being in love with a woman to which
you haven’t even spoken to may work. Maybe they haven’t even touched their
hands once but she has already become for him the love of his life. This does
not work if you have already suffered two or three times and understood what
love really means. ‘Winterreise’ (Schubert) is a very different matter, but
here also the character is not an older man. He is a human being who
nonetheless has a life of his own. It is not so much a matter of age but of
suffering.”
—And what happens with these works in the
record market?
“In the case of the Lied we don’t even have
to take into account whether it is better or worse to record more popular
things: the CD market has become a mess. And the Lied does no longer exist at
this point, so it’s the same whether you record a well-known cycle or another
that is not so well-known. What is important here is the artistic point of
view. What I intend doing is to study a program thoroughly, record it and then
make tours during which the record can be sold. I would love to prepare a new
program of Lieder each year, but I’m not always able to do it because I have a
very complicated schedule.”
—You recently sang, under the
conduction of Claudio Abbado, a totally unknown cantata by Brahms, “Rinaldo”.
“The truth is that I myself also did not know
it. Claudio told me about it when we were recording the CD with opera arias. He
wanted at all costs to include an aria of ‘Rinaldo’ in the album, but I told
him that if we opened up this repertoire, we would also have to record, for
instance, something from ‘The Creation’ (Haydn) and things of that kind, so we
only included opera arias in that CD and we decided to do together the whole
cantata in a concert. It is very interesting, with a text by Goethe about the
story of Rinaldo and Armida, but only narrated by Rinaldo’’.
“ONE CANNOT FORESEE THE FUTURE”
—How do you deal with the issue
of acquiring contracts for the next five years or more?
“It is complicated. One must program a
schedule a long time in advance. At first, this was very difficult for me and
even nowadays it is not an easy matter. One cannot foresee the future. You can’t
know whether your voice will be capable of doing this or the other. You can’t
know whether your voice will cease to develop itself or if it will make further
progress... But that is how the opera business works nowadays.”
—And how do you solve the dilemma?
“The most important thing is the combination:
what we place immediately before or after a very difficult role, how much time
you will have left between one performance and the next one... Do we place
something that is in the same vein or something lighter to release the voice
and make it more flexible? Only time will tell if I was wrong or not. Up to now
this has worked very well. At the beginning, it was very difficult to convince
the theaters about this. I always try to have a mixed repertoire because,
personally, I don’t like to only dedicate myself to one thing and also because
I believe that it is not good for my voice to sing year-round the same
repertoire. For instance, after ‘Lohengrin’ I perform ‘Carmen’ in München, then
‘Tosca’ in December, ‘Adriana Lecouvreur’ in London,
then ‘Werther” in Vienna...
’’
“It was of great help in “Lohengrin” to have
sung before an Italian repertoire, which has the flexibility, the legato, the
long phrasing. German repertoire is different because it has one consonant
after the other, but one has to know that it is in the vowels that the language
is understood. ‘Lohengrin’ is Wagner’s most Italian opera, he used to say so
himself. Wagner always liked Italian opera and, particularly Italian technique.
In his letters he wrote that he wanted for this character the combination of a
beautiful legato with the phrases in German text. And it works! This is very
interesting for me.”
—Your option is for an open
repertoire. There are other singers who only perform a handful of roles
throughout their lives.
“Five or seven roles throughout your whole
life …! Some have managed it wonderfully well and their voice has been in a
perfect state almost to the end. (Alfredo) Kraus, for instance, had always a
young voice. It is fantastic, but I find it boring to do always the same
things. Not only to sing the same music but also playing the same roles. At the
end, everything stays set, without any evolution. It is true that it is not
always easy to be in new roles, memorizing such a lot of words, but it is what
I prefer. If I make a production and leave it for a year or a year and a half
and then return to it, it is like finding once more a friend that I haven’t
seen for a long time and to whom I have a lot of things to tell. If you see
your friend every day, after a while you no longer have anything left to talk
about, because you have already talked about everything. Instead, in this other
way, there is always something new to discover: look what I found here! This
also happens in music and with the personality of a character.”
PETER GRIMES, HOFFMANN, OTHELLO AND TRISTAN:
DREAMS IN THE HORIZON
—Can the character free
himself from the singer up to the point that one of them goes on a road that
you never even imagined?
“I always try to start from zero and to create
the character each time I appear on stage. It has happened that I have reached
the point when I can make a character act in a very different way from that
which I initially had in mind or which is very different from a first
production. I let myself be led by the emotion and the spontaneity of that
moment, and in this way the musical performance itself also becomes fresh and
credible, which is the most important issue. Thus I discover the joy of singing
on each occasion. It is something which, and forgive me for saying so, I really
do for myself.”
—The control over the voice
does not also end up by controlling the emotions that one wants to convey?
“Once you have attained total control over
your voice, you are free and able to involve yourself emotionally in the
interpretation, really feeling it.”
—Is there a character which
represents a dream for you?
“Yes, I am very interested in
this Othello... Also in Hoffmann and “Peter Grimes”. And Tristan! An impressive
character. The third act is a fantastic psychological study. It is very long...
but only the third act. The first act is nothing. The second act has that
extraordinary duet which may be sung in quite a lyrical way. But then comes the
third act... phew.... almost an hour alone!”
—They will surely come …
“One has to wait and see how the voice makes
progress. In 2011 I will be Siegmund in ‘Die Walküre’, which is very demanding
in its low tones; it is a role that is almost for a baritenor. Very interesting
from a theatrical point of view. There is still some time left for Siegfried,
Tristan and Tannhäuser.”
SINGING ABOUT SUFFERING
—Your experience with the
French repertoire has been excellent in roles such as Romeo (Gounod), Don José
(Bizet) and Werther (Massenet). Werther, particularly, is a very complex role,
both as regards the voice and the dramatic part …
“I prepared myself for a long time before
singing it. Generally speaking, French operas allow one to play with emotions
and colors, and the vocal personality is not univocal. In Werther there is a
mixture between the typically French tenor, Mozart’s clear tenor, and
sometimes, the dramatic tenor. It is very demanding because you have to control
both the voice and the emotions.”
—In a certain sense, Werther
requires crying while singing.
“Yes, and crying on stage is one of the most
difficult things to do. It is possible for an actor, but if a singer cries, he
is no longer able to sing. This forces one to look for a color and an emission
for the crying, so that it insinuates itself. Once you have discovered this,
you sing over that color.”
—Always maintaining the
beauty of the singing?
“It
does not seem so bad to me to lose for some moments the beauty of the sound in
order to create more credible emotions.’’
—What happens when a
régisseur asks for things with which you do not agree?
“That happens every day!
(Laughs) But, generally speaking, I know that if I take things in hand, if I
prepare things adequately, I am well underway. If a singer arrives without knowing
almost anything about a character, without any ideas about what to do, a
régisseur who is also incapable of explaining well what he wants to do, starts
doing strange things. But if I am well prepared and say at once what I think
and what I propose, everything changes. One may see afterwards which idea is
taken up, but one is already able to work on a safer foundation. My way of
doing things is to propose something and to show it right away and it works in
90 % of the cases. There are also more particular productions where the
interest does not lie so much in performing the story but rather in doing
something totally different, and that is really difficult. If I do not agree
with it, I try to show my point of view in a subtle way but I don’t run away and
make a scandal. The best thing to do is to be well prepared to respond.”
—What are for you the
characteristics of an ideal régisseur?
“The ideal régisseur is one who has a clear
idea about a character and the story in which he is inserted. But not a physical
idea. The physical aspects must be created by the performer. This is the only
way in which they are natural and credible. In short, a régisseur who sees what
I propose and responds to it: yes, I like that; I don’t like that other thing;
I want a bit more of this... In short, an arbitrator who observes and cleans up
what we, the singers, are offering him.”
—Is silence, internally
speaking, important for you?
“Yes, on some occasions. I seek to find that
inner calm. It is not a total silence, however. When I study, when I have to
memorize things, if I do it in total silence, I forget it almost at once. I
have so many things to think about at that moment that total vacuum is not good
for me. Instead, if the children are near, if the TV is on, it works at once.
It goes straight to my memory. My wife tells me: “Turn off the radio. Do the
children bother you...?’ No, no, why should they bother me? I do it this way.
That is how music and words start working inside me. I start talking internally
and discovering things amid all the noise. My mind starts working better,
memorizing. When I sing something for which I do not always have to be on
stage, I go to the dressing room to study another role. When I sang
‘Fierabras’, by Schubert, where I only sing in the first and third act, I spent
the whole second act preparing ‘Parsifal’. People asked me: ‘What are you
doing? Why are you not preparing yourself for the next act? Are you out of your
mind?’ But I had already prepared myself! In this way, I make the most of my
time. Of course, it all depends. Sometimes it is very difficult! As in
‘Lohengrin’, for instance: although the second act is almost totally free for
me, I am not able to study anything else because you need total concentration
in the third act. It is long and the phrases are also complex so that one
easily loses oneself. When I sing ‘Tosca’ instead, I sing a lot but when I am
not on stage, I can memorize a Lied or anything else.”
“I CAN PERFECTLY SURVIVE
WITHOUT APPLAUSES”
—Is there any character which
you feel closer to your heart?
“It’s hard to say. I always love the character
I am performing at the time; I fall in love with it....! I think that it is a
beautiful thing that something like that happens: all my energy, happiness and
desires are dedicated to what I am doing that day. It is true that there are
characters that are out of this world, like Werther, which I sang for the first
time in January of this year. He is a being that is outside life itself. And
what about Don Carlo… it is beautiful both as singing and as a character.
Cavaradossi (“Tosca’’) as a character is not so interesting … But the music is
a marvel!”.
—You have highlighted in your
performances the vulnerability of male characters such as Lohengrin,
Cavaradossi, Don José. Is it an option of yours which also proceeds from the
music itself?
“The composer writes phrases where it is
understood that the character is a human being with doubts and weaknesses. I
love to discover things like that because it provides a much more interesting
character. It is common in Lohengrin to find very heroic interpretations: I say
this and you do it and don`t make any questions; I love you and that’s it...
I’m not interested in that sort of thing and neither is the audience. A
character like that is not only unpleasant, but is also boring and has little
credibility. What moves me is the human being within that character. And it can
be found because there are doubts in Lohengrin. The same thing happens with
Cavaradossi: he thinks that he has everything in his hands but in the third
act, he realizes that everything is going wrong; there is suffering to be shown
in that, a loss to be made. In Lohengrin everything is in A major, the clearest
of tones, the most heroic one, but when he appears on stage, he does not do it
like a hero, saying: ‘Look, here I am’… On the contrary, he is moved himself by
what is going on. It is a miracle for him, too, and in the first place, he
thanks the swan who has brought him there … ‘Thanks, my dear swan, for having
brought me here ….’ He is, therefore, not a common hero. He is finally sad,
depressed, and does not know what to do. He knows that everything will be lost.
Furthermore, he has fallen in love with a woman. In this production we have
tried to show that he doesn’t know what to do with this woman. He is a man who
is able to commit mistakes and to feel.”
—At the end of a performance,
is it difficult for you to return to your own self or do you go back home as if
nothing had happened?
“I quickly get inside the
skin of a character and step outside it also easily. It is very helpful in this
matter knowing that there is something outside that is waiting for me. If all
my life were just opera and being on stage, it would be very difficult. Success
or failure also changes with this in mind. If the performance has not been a
success, maybe through no fault of my own, I go home to my real life and don’t
think about other things. I can perfectly survive without applauses. However,
the adrenaline sometimes keeps me two or three hours awake after a performance.
I cannot fall asleep at once because I am wound up.”
—You have also sung
oratorios. Can one sing Bach keeping a distance from affections?
“With the Evangelist of Bach Passions, I do
not think that one has to take a distance to sing a phrase as long and painful
as: ‘and wept bitterly’. I don’t think Bach wrote it without feeling emotions.
On the contrary. If we speak about his orchestral music or a work such as ‘The
Well-Tempered Clavier’ and also his motets, his cantatas, his Passions…
Everything is written with emotion. They are, naturally, delicate emotions. The
same happens with Monteverdi. At first, the great orchestral apparatus seems to
be missing but each fragment is more intense than the other one. Each piece is
made with a fantastic simplicity and minimalism. I have performed ‘Il Ritorno
di Ulisse in Patria’ and Nero from ‘The coronation of Poppea’. I like
Monteverdi a lot. For me, he is almost the best there is.”
—You and your wife (mezzo Margarete Joswig)
are both singers. What do your children say about these parents who make music
all day long?
“It may be boring that we sing too much … For
them, music may be an enemy because making music means that their parents are not
at home. But they love and feel music and love going with us to the concerts.
The youngest one is full of energy and cannot sit still... The oldest one does
not feel much respect towards music... And the middle one is always moved by
it, he looks at the orchestra, observes and listens to everything. They all
play instruments and sing; the oldest one even sings very well... She has some
high notes...”.
—The new Callas?
“I hope not...’’.
—The family issue is worse for women.
“Yes, because there is always this decision
to be made between family and career. The combination with the family is very
hard. Then one thing and another. The hormonal changes causing problems to the
voice and having to try a new technique, a new way in which to use the voice.
It is really not easy for women. But we need them! We cannot sing ‘Billy Budd’
(Britten) every night” (laughs).
BOX:
Recommendations to listen and
watch
Youtube.com allows you to see Jonas Kaufmann
in "La Traviata", almost dying together with Violetta (Christine
Schäfer); rendering inevitable the murder of Carmen performed by Anna Caterina
Antonacci (London),
and interpreting “Cantique de Nöel”, by Adam, in the Dresden Frauenkirche.
Those who have the "Bel sogno" CD, performed by Cristina
Gallardo-Domâs, may listen to Kaufmann as Alfredo. Apart from his
"Romantic arias" (Decca, 2008), which include “Pourquoi me réveiller”
from “Werther” (Massenet), one has to listen to his singing of Mozart,
Schubert, Beethoven and Wagner, with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under the
conduction of Claudio Abbado (Decca, 2009). He is not to be missed in "In
fernem Land" and "Mein lieber Schwann", from
"Lohengrin" (Wagner). And he is also unforgettable in the CD for
which he obtained the Gramophon Award: Lieder by Richard Strauss (Harmonia
Mundi, 2006), where he shows spirit and refinement in "Morgen",
"Die Nacht" and "Sehnsucht". In 2009, EMI launched “Madama
Butterfly” (Puccini), with Kaufmann as Pinkerton and Angela Gheorghiu as Cio
Cio San. This year Decca presented his youthful and intimate vision of the
cycle “Die Schöne Müllerin” (Schubert) and the DVD of his first “Lohengrin” in
München. The launching of “Vicino a te”, an album dedicated to “verismo”
pieces, including arias from “I Pagliacci” (Leoncavallo) and “Cavalleria
Rusticana” (Mascagni) and the fragment which is one of Kaufmann’s favorites:
“Giulietta! Son io!”, from “Giulietta e Romeo”, by Zandonai, is expected at the
end of September.
At the start of the 2010
Bayreuth Festival, Kaufmann presented a book about his life: “Meinen die
wirklich mich?”,
written by the editor in chief of “Opernwelt”, Thomas Voigt.
During the next few months he
will be adding to his repertoire “Adriana Lecouvreur” (in Berlin
and London) and perform once more “Werther” (Vienna, in January). The New York MET is expecting him in April and May for his
first Siegmund in “Die Walküre” (Wagner), and from 2011-2012 onwards, he will
become Bacchus (“Ariadne auf Naxos”, by
Strauss) and Eneas (“The Trojans”, by Berlioz). During the following seasons he
will be seen as the lead character in operas such as “Andrea Chénier”
(Giordano), “Il Trovatore” (Verdi), “I Pagliacci” (Leoncavallo), “Cavalleria
Rusticana” (Mascagni) and “Manon Lescaut” (Puccini).
Official website: http://www.jonaskaufmann.com
Unofficial website (with more
and better information): http://www.jkaufmann.info