Playbillarts.com, 11 Sep 2007

By Matthew Westphal

Tenor Jonas Kaufmann, Taken Ill, Cancels Two Major Engagements

Jonas Kaufmann, the German tenor whose combination of robust voice and sex appeal has created plenty of excitement at the Met, Covent Garden, Vienna, Munich and other major operatic centers, has pulled out of two major engagements this month due to illness. The first was Los Angeles Opera's season-opening gala concert last Sunday, September 9, with company general director Plácido Domingo conducting Verdi's Requiem. Kaufmann withdrew on Tuesday of last week; L.A. Opera engaged Arturo Chacón-Cruz, a young tenor then in rehearsal at Domingo's other company, Washington National Opera, and flew him to California for the Requiem. The second cancellation is for this week: Kaufmann had been scheduled to sing the title role in two performances of Verdi's Don Carlo at the Zurich Opera House, the company with which he works most often. There appears to be no announcement of Kaufmann's illness or withdrawal in the German or Swiss press or on the company's website, where his name on the cast list was quietly replaced early today with that of Fabio Armiliato. A representative of Kaufmann's management agency in New York confirmed to PlaybillArts that the tenor is simply suffering from a very bad cold. He remains scheduled to take the tenor solos in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra to open Carnegie Hall's season in early October, and he still intends to return to Zurich for late October and November runs of Don Carlo and Königskinder by Engelbert Humperdinck, the composer of Hänsel und Gretel.