Jonas Kaufmann - unofficial web site

Wenn unter der musikalischen Leitung des Frankfurter Kapellmeisters Roland Böer „Die verkaufte Braut" auf die Bühne kommt, wird Jonas Kaufmann in der Partie des Hans nach Frankfurt zurückgekehrt sein. Der deutsche Tenor, der seit 2001 zum Ensemble der Oper Zürich gehört, hatte seinen Einstand im Oktober 2005 am Frankfurter Opernhaus mit einem hochgelobten Liederabend gegeben.

Dem dunkelgelockten Mitdreißiger nimmt man den Typ des überschwenglich verliebten und zugleich listigen Knechts, der den Heiratsvermittler Kecal (Gregory Frank) austrickst und am Ende statt seines tölpelhaften Halbbruders Wenzel (Carsten Süß) seine Herzensdame Marie (Maria Fontosh) in den Ehestand führt, gerne ab. Persönlich sieht Jonas Kaufmann auch mehr die heitere als die ernste Note der 1866 uraufgeführten, gerne als Singspiel bezeichneten Oper: „Ich weiß, dass in letzter Zeit prinzipiell der slawisch-tragische Aspekt bei diesem Stück in den Vordergrund gerückt wird. Ich finde das aber schade. Smetanas ursprüngliche Idee war es, eine heitere Oper zu schreiben. Aber heute ist im westeuropäischen Kulturkreis die Situation, dass jemand verheiratet wird, nicht mehr normal. Mit dem historischen Hintergrund gesehen, war es sicherlich eine lustige Geschichte, zudem mit glücklichem Ausgang. Heute sieht man den Inhalt viel ernster, weil man sich über die Problematik viel mehr Gedanken macht. Das Thema Zwangsehen ist ja auch in Deutschland ein sehr aktuelles. Was das Musikalische betrifft, so ist in der Oper alles enthalten, sowohl heitere, lustige als auch melancholische Elemente. Im tschechischen Kulturkreis ist dieses Stück eine Nationaloper, ein Heiligtum."

Gefallen gefunden hat Jonas Kaufmann an seiner Partie bereits in jungen Jahren durch die Aufnahme der Oper mit Fritz Wunderlich als Hans. „Für jeden deutschen Tenor dient Fritz Wunderlich sicherlich als Vorbild. Neben der Strahlkraft seiner Stimme beeindruckt die Sentimentalität, die er in seiner Stimme besitzt. Man hört in seinen Tondokumenten, mit welchem Mitteilungsbedürfnis und mit wie viel Lebensfreude er singt, welche Gefühlswelt er in seine Stimme hineinlegt. Es gibt zum Beispiel eine Aufnahme der Lensky-Arie, die einen zutiefst berührt. Man könnte meinen, er stände wirklich kurz vor dem Selbstmord. Das ist sehr prägend, das gibt es nicht so oft, und es zeigt: Singen besteht nicht nur aus schönen Tönen, sondern soll einen packen."
Kaufmann hätte sich gefreut, wenn sein Rollendebüt auf Tschechisch stattgefunden hätte. „So ist es einfacher für die Zuschauer, aber in der Originalsprache hätten Musik und Sprache eine noch bessere Einheit gebildet." Das Verhalten von Hans, der Marie bis zuletzt über seine wahre Identität im Unklaren und sie an seiner Liebe und seinen lauteren Absichten zweifeln lässt, ist ihm allerdings auch in der genutzten, sehr genauen Übersetzung nicht klar geworden. „Sein Verhalten wirkt dadurch nicht weniger seltsam. Er spielt der Marie übel mit. Es hätte sicherlich die Möglichkeit bestanden, ihr zu einem früheren Zeitpunkt die Wahrheit zu sagen. Dass sie das anders interpretiert, dass ihn das alles nicht berührt, ist verständlich. Was als Motivation dahinter steht, lässt sich nur erahnen. "

Bedrich Smetana (1824–84), dem zeitlebens eine zu große Begeisterung für Wagner in seiner Heimat vorgeworfen wurde, gilt als heimlicher Verehrer Mozarts. „Wenn man sich die Struktur des Stückes betrachtet, ist dies sicherlich richtig, zum Beispiel im Vergleich mit ,Die Entführung aus dem Serail’. Musikalisch betrachtet, ist es aber eine andere Welt. Da gibt es folkloristische, slawische Elemente, die sich in der Komposition widerspiegeln und ihr das Lokalkolorit verleihen", so Jonas Kaufmann.
Das Repertoire des gebürtigen Münchners, der mit der Mezzosopranistin Margarete Joswig verheiratet ist, reicht heute vom Tamino in Mozarts „Zauberflöte" bis zum Parsifal, den er kürzlich am Opernhaus Zürich sang. „Je breiter das Repertoire ist, desto wohler fühle ich mich. Ich mag es, meine Stimme in den Ecken zu bewegen, nicht immer nur im Zentrum." An der New Yorker Met feierte der Sänger gerade erst sein Debüt als Alfredo in Verdis „La Traviata", im Herbst kommt der Don José in Bizets „Carmen" in der Londoner Covent Garden hinzu. „Der Don José ist sicherlich eine neue Herausforderung für mich." Zu den Partien, die er noch gerne singen möchte, zählen die Titelrollen in Jacques Offenbachs „Les Contes d’Hoffmann" und in Jules Massenets „Werther". Aber das sind eben nur Nebenwünsche. „Generell muss ich sagen, ich bin eigentlich wunschlos glücklich." So, wie der Hans am Ende in „Die verkaufte Braut".

Telegraph: This sexy singer is sticking to opera
Jonas Kaufmann tells Rupert Christiansen why he won't be jumping on the crossover wagon

Passionate: Jonas Kaufmann with Anna Caterina Antonacci in Carmen (rehearsal)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Keeping up with the Jonas

August 2006, Times Online

As leaving presents go, Brian McMaster’s gift to himself as outgoing boss of the Edinburgh International Festival takes some beating. “Honour tradition, but welcome the new” is the message of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger, which is the climax to the 2006 festival — and the tenor singing the hero of the opera, Jonas Kaufmann, definitely represents something new. “I know many colleagues who are doing nothing else but travelling all over the world, singing exactly the same role, in every single theatre,” he says. “But for me that’s not real life.”

Can any opera singer — much less a tenor — have a real life? Kaufmann, who almost seems to have risen to the top of his profession without anyone noticing, is determined to make sure that he does — and to combine it with a singing career that’s distinctly off the beaten track. “I remember once I did a horrible production and I said to the soprano whom I was singing with: ‘Just go home and forget all about it.’ And she said: “You can go home to your children. I don’t have children and I don’t have a husband. This is my life and I don’t have anything outside of opera to fall back on.’ I’m very happy to have both.”

When we meet on a balmy day in Kaufmann’s new home town of Zürich I’m lucky to have squeezed an hour out of his sacrosanct holiday schedule. Before Edinburgh, where Kaufmann will be singing a lieder recital as well as scaling the Everest of Meistersinger, comes three weeks devoted to his wife (also a singer) and three small children. “If I didn’t have that life to ground me,” he says, “then I don’t think I could give the same quality on stage.”

If Kaufmann ever lets the nice-guy image slip then it’s strictly for professional reasons. “Sometimes you have to a be a little bit rude, to be more accepted in opera,” he concedes. “If you’re just normal, and everything is fine for you because you don’t want to cause trouble, then you become part of the furniture and you become someone who doesn’t have to be treated well. But from the moment you play the divo, and you say ‘This won’t happen again because I’m leaving’, then everyone suddenly respects you more. Sometimes it is really necessary, but it doesn’t mean you have to play the same character in your private life.”

Could it be that he’s learnt some tricks from his frequent co-star, the famously temperamental Angela Gheorghiu? “You know, you’re not the first person to ask me,” he laughs. “But I can’t say anything negative about her. Maybe if something is wrong with her assistants or the costume design and she doesn’t accept it then it can be . . . dangerous, let’s say — but everybody knows about that and I think that’s why they treat her in a certain way.”

So successful were Kaufmann and Gheorghiu’s last performances together — in La traviata at the Metropolitan Opera, New York — that New York magazine christened the duo the “Brangelina” of opera. “It’s a little bit weird,” Kaufmann confesses, “because when they were saying that I’m appearing like a rock star on stage I would prefer them to talk first about the voice.”

No debate from me. Kaufmann’s unique sound — dark-tinted, almost baritonal in its timbre — is far more of a USP than either the film-star looks (“yes, the Latin lover type,” sighs Kaufmann) or his ability to get on with Gheorghiu. And then there’s the sheer range of roles in which he deploys it. Most young tenors are shied away from heavyweights such as Wagner, Verdi or Puccini. Kaufmann sings all three, as well as keeping the lighter Mozart roles with which he began his career. “But I don’t want to be called the Wagnerian tenor of the German tenor or the Italian tenor,” he protests. “About 25 years ago this system started whereby everybody was put into a box and you had to specialise. For me the challenge is to use every single part of your voice.”

It took a while for Kaufmann to realise exactly how to do that. Music was a family hobby when he was growing up in Munich (“My grandfather was an extreme Wagnerian,” he recalls), but he never thought that his sterling efforts for the school choir might lead to a career. And even after switching from maths to music at university and nabbing an apprenticeship at Saarbrücken opera house, things still weren’t clicking. “After one year I was completely destroyed I realised I didn’t know how to sing.”

The problem was that his husky tenor was being misunderstood. “Everybody said: ‘No that’s too loud, that’s too much, that’s took dark.’ I was trying to fulfil their ideas of what a young German tenor should sound like. But you can’t put another pair of vocal cords in just to satisfy the ideas of your teachers.” It was a new, American teacher who came to Kaufmann’s aid. “He taught me to relax while singing — and to trust the voice. It sounds simple but it took me a while to get it.”

The straitjacketing of voice types isn’t the only gripe Kaufmann has with the German opera houses. “Everyone’s always talking about those crazy German productions,” he says. “And there are a lot of productions that are way over the top — just being modern for the sake of being modern.” If Kaufmann is slightly bitter then it’s hardly surprising. One particularly wacky production of Mozart’s Die Entführung auf dem Serail had the (notoriously conservative) Salzburg Festival audience baying for Kaufmann’s blood after he told them to leave the show if they didn’t like it. “I was waiting on stage for five minutes on top of a ladder, in tails and a white plastic overall, and the audience were shouting ‘Piss off’. But it was an unacceptable production — the director was on holiday and we were sitting there having to tough it out.”

Moral of the story? “Our business is to entertain, and you shouldn’t forget that.”

Big things are now happening for the eloquent, articulate and throughly grounded Kaufmann. In something of a coup for Covent Garden, he’ll be appearing in its new production of Carmen for his first attempt at the role of Don José. And although he’s tight-lipped on the details, he hints that his first exclusive record deal is now on the cards.

The only question is: does he want it enough? “One of my conditions is that they can’t rob me of my private life,” he says. But Kaufmann also knows that he’s got to keep up with the times. “There’s no future in sticking with the old things and repeating them all the time. Opera needs to modernise, but in a stylish way.” It’s the gospel according to Jonas — and no one embodies it better than him.

The Herald, September 01 2006

There's lots of change from a tenor

ROWENA SMITH

Jonas Kaufmann, the German 'rock star' of opera who's set to take the Edinburgh stage by storm, is a man who refuses to be pinned down.

It's an unusually warm, though typically windy Edinburgh summer's day, and in the square in front of the Sheraton Hotel the star German tenor of the moment is discussing his career over a coffee.
Actually though, Jonas Kaufmann isn't playing the star - there's no sign of a scarf or demands to move inside away from the persistent breeze that ripples through the square, and conversation is frequently punctuated by the appearance of his big, infectious laugh.

Kaufmann has been in Edinburgh for a couple of days, giving a recital in the Queen's Hall the previous morning and is now about to start rehearsals for the closing concert of the Festival; a concert performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg that is outgoing festival director Brian McMaster's parting gift to himself.
Looking at Kaufmann's jet-setting schedule, it's surprising that he's found time to spend a week in Edinburgh. But then, the Edinburgh Festival has been good to Kaufmann, effectively launching his career in this country - and taking the lead tenor role of Walther in Wagner's Meistersinger is something of a personal favour for its outgoing director.

These days, Kaufmann is in demand in the most prestigious opera houses in the world. Already a familiar figure in the major European houses, he has recently taken the New York Met by storm, where he made his debut earlier this year as Alfredo in La Traviata alongside Angela Gheorghiu, a pairing that had American critics in raptures for their looks as well as their vocal talents. Mention of the New York critic who wrote of his rock-star looks elicits another huge laugh. "I don't think the world really needs a rock-star tenor."
Still, given Kaufmann's "Latin-lover" looks, the tanned skin and dark, curly hair that belies his German origins and goes against the stereotype of the short, rotund tenor (an image that holds more than a grain of truth) it's surprising that he hasn't been snapped up by one of the big-name record labels and marketed as the next sexy singing sensation. Instead, at 36 and with his career already well established, he's just released his first solo recording, on the resolutely un-starry Harmonia Mundi label, a disc of Strauss lieder that has had critics reaching for the superlatives, one describing Kaufmann's performance as "sexy, passionate singing, delivered with thrilling ease".

Actually, Kaufmann later admits, overtures have been made by record companies in the past - and there is, he hints, currently a contract, as yet unsigned, waiting at home - but he's not interested in being pigeonholed as an Italianate tenor, or even a German one, something record companies have been keen to do. Such typecasting is indeed something he has been remarkably successful at avoiding. His voice, with its extremely distinctive dark, rich timbre at any rate rather defies categorisation. It has proved to be remarkably versatile.
Kaufmann has sung more than 50 roles to date, ranging across the spectrum from Mozart to Wagner and from the most popular works in the repertoire (Alfredo in Traviata) to the most obscure (the eponymous hero of Schubert's Fierrabras).

Learning music comes easily, he says, so he's often asked to do unusual things because people know he'll master the part quickly. Which is no bad thing; he gets bored very easily and says he's now suffering when he looks at next season's schedule and sees the number of Traviatas he has lined up.
First there's a return visit to the Met, then Zurich, followed by Paris and La Scala, Milan. The Paris Traviata is perhaps the one he's most looking forward to; in a new production by controversial Swiss director Christoph Marthaler, it promises to be a million miles from the Met's opulently traditional affair designed by Franco Zeffirelli.

"Sometimes it's really relaxing to do one of these pure, old-style productions," says Kaufmann, "but I don't think I could stand doing it all the time. When I saw pictures of the Met's Traviata, I didn't think I wanted to do it, though it turned out that it was actually nice just to concentrate on the voice for once. It wouldn't be possible to do that in Germany because they're really into crazy productions there."

Conservatism aside, the main drawback to working at the Met, or anywhere else in the US, is being away from his family, his wife (also a singer) and their three young children, for long periods of time. The family home is in Zurich, where Kaufmann has a contract with the opera house to sing about 20 performances a year.
Despite Kaufmann's current preoccupation with La Traviata, he's still finding time to fit new roles into his repertoire. First, there's his eagerly awaited Don Jose in Covent Garden's new production of Carmen, then there's the title role of Verdi's Don Carlo in Zurich.

Lensky in Eugene Onegin, a role he says he's desperate to do, is also in the pipeline and there are still many more he has in his sights; Massenet's Werther, Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, he even mentions Britten's Peter Grimes. Then there's the one role he covets above all; Verdi's Otello, though not for another few years yet. "By the time I'm 45, I'll be ready," he says. "I'm not waiting any longer."

But back to his forthcoming first performance of Walther in Die Meistersinger, perhaps the most demanding role Kaufmann has tackled to date. It's always best, he says, to try a role that's on the upper edges of your ability in the concert hall first, "so you can just really concentrate on the voice and have the score in front of you. Afterwards you can then say, 'fine, I can start doing staged productions now', or 'let's leave that for another couple of years and pick it up again later when it'll be much easier'."

Sound advice, though not something he followed when he sang Parsifal for the first time earlier this year in a fully-staged production in Zurich. That wasn't an equal challenge to the one he now faces.
"Parsifal has about a third of what Walther has to sing and it is musically completely different," he says. "Bits of Parsifal can be done in a lied voice, which I did because I think it's much more beautiful to use different vocal colours. Walther though, you really just have to sing, and as for that prize-lied, well, it just seems to go on for ever."

Sound Bites: Jonas Kaufmann

http://www.metoperafamily.org/

Jonas Kaufmann: more than just eye candy

http://www.amny.com/

By Ted Phillips, October 6, 2006

Special to amNewYork

Jonas Kaufmann appreciates being called eye candy, but he really just wants to be heard. "The clock is ticking and you can't conserve that forever,' the 37-year-old tenor said of his looks with one of the deep laughs that punctuate his conversation.

Since his acclaimed debut at the Metropolitan Opera earlier this year, the Munich-born singer has found himself more in the spotlight in both Europe and in the U.S.

Sitting in an aluminum chair on the sidewalk near the Met last Friday, Kaufmann sipped a Diet Coke following a rehearsal for "The Magic Flute." When Kaufmann takes the stage Saturday night as the handsome prince Tamino, it won't be the first time he's played the role, but Julie Taymor's ("Lion King") elaborate production has been a new experience.

"This production is based on all this gorgeous show that is going on and the singers are just part of this," Kaufmann 37, said. "It's another idea than to start with the characters and then build the rest around."

Kaufmann, a father of three, is a fan of modern productions that help younger audiences relate to the opera. "If I see that this can actually happen right now and next to me, it can be more interesting, it can grab me way more, to touch me emotionally."

Kaufmann made his Met debut earlier this year playing the male lead in "La Traviata" opposite Angela Gheorghiu's Violetta. The diva was impressed when they were first paired together in Britain. "I thought he was absolutely perfect to sing Alfredo and I heard a voice, a little bit baritonal voice with a lot of temperament," Gheorghiu said in a call from her native Romania. "We all think Germans they are not so Latin in their way to sing and act on stage but I was surprised to find an important talent."

Gheorghiu tempered her praise with the suggestion that Kaufmann needs to sing more French and Italian to build his confidence in those tongues. "He needs still more and more courage on stage and in his singing," she said.

He was on the verge of quitting two years out of school because he found it painful to sing. But then a new teacher told him to sing much deeper than he had been taught, and he found his true voice. "As soon as I sang like I do now, I was able to sing eight hours a day," Kaufmann said. "It opened up the whole tenor repertory to me."

The road to success has been long but steady. The Kaufmann household was filled with the sounds of his grandfather singing along to a Wagner score and his whole family played piano. Subscriptions to the opera house introduced him to the lyrical voice. Although he sang in the school choir from the age of six, it wasn't until being thoroughly bored by a year of studying mathematics in college that he made a serious go with his voice by enrolling in a music school.

After graduating, he made his professional debut when he was 24 at an opera house in Saarsbrücken with 36 performances of the operetta "Eine Nacht in Venedig" (A Night in Venice). "It was very good training," he said. "At the beginning you're extremely excited and you're nervous and after 15 performances maybe you get bored and say 'all that crap again.' Then you discover that you're relaxed and you don't care much about it because you've done it so many times and you really can work on yourself and try out things and grow."

Following three performances in the "Magic Flute", he'll keep busy shuttling about Europe to sing in "Carmen," "Fidelio," "Don Carlo" and "Parsifa"l before returning to the Met to sing in "La Traviata" in March.

Being in demand is a good problem, but growing success brings new challenges. "The difficult part now is to stay there, now that everyone's watching," Kaufmann said.

Jonas Kaufmann performs as Tamino in "Die Zauberflöte" on October 7, 9, 13 at the Metropolitan Opera.

www.jkaufmann.info