|
|
|
|
|
Classical Source, May 2008 |
Written by Mansel Stimpson |
The Man Who Found His Voice: Jonas Kaufmann – Romantic Arias and Tosca
|
Mansel Stimpson talks to the German tenor who
has released a recording of Romantic Arias and sings Cavaradossi in The
Royal Opera’s Tosca in May… |
|
“My family weren’t professional performers
but they loved classical music and all of them played the piano.
Consequently I grew up listening to music all day long and we took out
subscriptions to almost every concert series available to us.”
Jonas Kaufmann looking back on his childhood and enthusing too about his
birthplace. “I think that almost everybody loves their home-town and I
certainly love Munich. The cultural life is great, but there’s more to it
than that. You have all the other facilities around there too: you have the
lakes and the Alps themselves are only an hour away. Throughout my childhood
we had a place in the Tyrol, a very old farmhouse that was really paradise.”
Munich has two opera houses and a Hochschule, where Jonas studied music, and
is the ideal spot to launch a singing career. It appears as though
everything was smooth sailing. Even while he was studying, Jonas made
professional appearances in small roles at two local venues, the Bavarian
State Opera and the Gärtnerplatz Theatre. Then in 1993 he was a prize-winner
in the Nürnberg Meistersinger competition after which he quickly became part
of an ensemble in Saarbrücken for a few years. All of this suggests a career
without problems, but something quite different emerges when I ask him about
this history and what seemed to be early recognition of his special
qualities.
“My problem was that the voice we all discovered was not really mine. It was
a nice voice, lightweight and flexible with a high register well suited to
certain things, and it’s true that doing what was expected of me led to
those small roles in Munich and also to my first contract which was in a
small town not far from there. The latter meant doing thirty-six
performances of the Johann Strauss operetta A Night in Venice. It’s a
beautiful piece but appearing that number of times in it was, as you might
imagine, a bit much and I was still studying at the time. Later there came
that period at Saarbrücken. After the rather cosy time at the Hochschule it
put me under pressure in a way that I had not foreseen. You often had to
sing for seven or eight hours a day, which seemed impossible. I did it, of
course, but I started getting troubles with my voice and consequently I
looked for another teacher.”
This point was reached in 1995 and the outcome was crucial to Jonas’s
career. “The teacher that I found was Michael Rhodes, an American baritone
from Brooklyn and what he said basically was that I had to change my voice.
I had been manipulating it to try and bring it close to the kind of voice
that I had been led to believe was appropriate. I was pushing a lot to
squeeze out my sound because I admired the kind of sound I was being asked
for, but it made me very stiff and tight and I should never have accepted it
as right for me. What Michael Rhodes urged me to do was to open my mouth and
relax, to produce whatever came out naturally. That may sound easy but to
cultivate the voice like that is not as simple as it sounds and it probably
took me half a year to become fully convinced that I should give up what I
had been doing before. There was also the fact that it seems logical to use
less voice to save the voice and, indeed, you hear all too often of young
singers who take on heavy repertoire too soon. But I realised that my case
was different and that with this new approach I really could sing all day
long without getting tired and, what’s more, wake up next morning with the
voice feeling fresh.”
Just how right he was to adopt this new approach is confirmed by Jonas’s
subsequent career and by the way in which his voice continues to develop. He
may have put aside composers such as Rossini having recognised that there
are other singers whose voices are better suited to that repertory but today
his voice aids him in his desire to expand his repertoire. Central to this
are German, French and Italian opera. “I’m climbing the ladder step by step,
not too much at once. In the last two years I have realised that the
direction that my voice is taking means that eventually I should be able to
take on anything that I want. It’s really a matter of getting the timing
right. I have already appeared in Parsifal and Lohengrin will be coming up
for the first time in the summer of 2009. Then, in March 2011, I will tackle
Siegmund – all of which meant so much to my grandfather who loved everything
Wagnerian. As for the Italian repertoire, I shall be singing Cavaradossi at
Covent Garden in May this year and I have in mind pieces like Ballo. Others
such as Butterfly would follow naturally and maybe Trovatore, but the real
target here, the heaviest role, is Otello and that I am very much looking
forward to when it comes – I just have to keep calm meanwhile, behave myself
and wait for it. There are also many things in French: some roles have to
wait but will come such as Aeneas in Troyens and many others would be
possible for me but can’t be fitted into my schedule yet.”
All of this gives some idea of what we can expect from Jonas, but fails even
so to take aboard other areas of work that he enjoys: performances in the
concert hall and in Lieder. The demand for the latter may not be so great
and in any case Jonas appreciates that there are singers who are specialists
in this field. Nevertheless it’s important to him, even if he can only
manage something like three to seven recitals a year. Admirers of his
acclaimed recording of songs by Richard Strauss will understand his
enthusiasm, but the appeal he finds in Lieder also comes from recognising
how it aids him. “It helps to keep the rainbow of colours in your voice
because you can use parts of that voice that would be almost inaudible in
the opera house.”
Another subject I raise is the question of singers whom Jonas admires and
here his comments unconsciously confirm his own interest in music as a means
of truthful dramatic expression. One inspiration here is Jon Vickers but for
the most part he talks of German singers of the past. “Immediately I have to
mention Fritz Wunderlich – he was just so admirable. When you hear him it is
as though he was giving his whole heart to every note, and all his emotions
too. It almost feels as though he approached every note as though it might
be his last. He gives all his energy and everything that he has to every
single phrase, and all of that is apparent in his recordings – it’s what
makes them so strong and so touching. What’s more, he did so many recordings
and concerts during his career that you have the impression that for him
every day must have contained thirty-six hours. Only somebody really
committed to his work could have done all that: he would have been burnt-out
had he not loved it so. But he was not alone: during the same period there
was Rudolf Schock, always in Wunderlich’s shadow but another brilliant
singer. Someone else I admire is Josef Traxel.”
Although Jonas feels that Wunderlich in particular set standards that no-one
is ever likely to match, he clearly sees him as his exemplar. “I think that
you start doing the right thing when you are honest because an audience can
feel the difference between emotions that come from inside you and those
that are contrived. When you really feel it within, it shows in your voice
which automatically changes into the right colour and that’s what you should
seek to achieve. You should never ever seek to make an effect for the sake
of it.”
The comments quoted here were made earlier this year in the very week that
Jonas Kaufmann’s recording of Romantic Arias had just appeared. At the time
of our meeting Jonas was preparing for the role of Alfredo in Verdi’s La
traviata which proved to be one of Covent Garden’s. His next engagement for
Royal Opera is as Cavaradossi in Tosca. The first of eight performances is
on 12 May and these plum roles have come his way in London only four years
on from his Covent Garden debut. That was in Puccini’s La Rondine and it was
with memories of that occasion that our talk came to an end.
The production in question was a revival of the 2002 staging that found
Angela Gheorghiu reprising her role as Magda and in it Jonas took on the
role of Ruggero previously played by Gheorghiu’s husband Roberto Alagna. Any
artist making a Covent Garden debut might well be nervous, but to do so
opposite the formidable Gheorghiu and to be appearing in the part formerly
taken by Alagna could have made the occasion truly unsettling. So I asked
Jonas how it was, and his reply may surprise some. “Of course it was a big
step for me, this debut, because this opera house is at least one of the top
three in the opera-world today and, indeed, for me given the overall quality
of the productions, it is actually number one. And, yes, I had heard tales
about Angela’s behaviour, but if I may say so she treated me very well. She
proved to be a very good colleague and, having done other things with Angela
since then, I think that I can say that the chemistry works well for us.
What did give me some pressure preparing La Rondine was the fact that
Roberto was actually there. All the time he would be watching the rehearsals
and eventually as the dress rehearsal approached I went over and asked if he
shouldn’t be doing the singing himself. He insisted that the study in which
he was then involved meant that he couldn’t have done it, but after that he
disappeared so it could be that he realised that he had been watching a
little bit too much. That for me was more stressful than all the rest, but
it was a gorgeous production, the music is beautiful and I didn’t have too
much to sing. All told it was an ideal role for my debut here.” |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|