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OperaUK, December 2008 |
Hugh Canning |
People: 352
JONAS KAUFMANN
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Kaufmann sings Florestan in Paris this month |
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Among
today’s leading lyric tenors, Jonas Kaufmann is most certainly the most
versatile. This month he sings Florestan in Johan Simons’s new production of
Fidelio for the Opéra National de Paris at the Palais Garnier, ending a year
which saw his role debuts as Cavaradossi in the Royal Opera’s Tosca revival,
and as the Massenet Des Grieux for Lyric Opera of Chicago. The outstanding
German-speaking tenor of his generation—he will turn 40 next year, although
he looks much younger—Kaufmann resolutely refuses to be boxed into a
German-tenor groove: the coming season climaxes with his first Lohengrin (a
new Richard Jones production in Munich), but there is also his first Romeo
in Venice. In the seasons ahead he plans to add Werther (in Paris), Siegmund
(New York), the Emperor in Die Frau ohne Schatten (Zurich). and both
Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur and Enée in Les Troyens (Covent Garden) to
his repertoire. Perhaps only Placido Domingo has sung a comparable variety
of roles (and many more, of course); but Kaufmann also regularly sings
Lieder and the great German concert works.
I first encountered Kaufmann on stage in 1999, as Belmonte in Christoph
Loy’s Brussels staging of Die Entführung aus dem Serail— ‘a lovely
production,’ Kaufmann recalls, ‘light-hearted but intelligent, and at least
you could follow the plot’. I remember being impressed not only by the
quality of his then lyric voice, but also by his striking good looks, his
eloquent diction and his natural delivery of the spoken dialogue (an
unusually long version of the linking text was performed, resulting in a
duration of almost four hours). Here was, I thought, the Mozart tenor we had
all been waiting for. By the time he made his Royal Opera debut six years
later—as Ruggiero opposite Angela Gheorghiu’s Magda in La rondine—he was
already phasing out some of his Mozart repertoire in favour of lyrical
Italian and French romantic leads and dipping his toes into German
dramatic-tenor waters: Florestan, Max in Der Freischütz, Hüon in Oberon,
Parsifal and—so far only in concert—Stolzing in Die Meistersinger. His rise
has been steady, but not without setbacks, as he explained when I met him at
Covent Garden and in Rome earlier this year.
Kaufmann grew up in Munich, where classical music was very much part of his
home life, with regular family visits to concerts, operas and the theatre.
His parents loved Italy, and frequent holidays there gave him early exposure
to the language, which he sings and speaks with hardly a trace of an accent.
(His English is also excellent, although with a curious transatlantic
flavour).
‘I always wanted to sing, even though I never expected to become a
professional and make money out of it, at least until I studied seriously at
the Hochschule in Munich. I was a tenor from the moment my voice broke.
Starting at 15 or 16, I was always trained as a light, high tenor, so I
didn’t discover that there was something more underneath. My voice stopped
at F or F sharp, so at least 25 per cent of the normal tenor range was
missing. I didn’t have those low notes. That’s partly because I was doing
things wrong in the higher tessitura. I did everything with pressure,
squeezing out the high notes, to support them, which is absolutely unhealthy
for the voice.’
In September 1994 he began his first engagement at the theatre in
Saarbrücken. ‘During those two years, I sang about 14 parts, so I was pretty
busy. One of the last parts I did there was the Dritte Knappe in Parsifal. I
actually lost my voice on stage in this tiny little role with only about ten
sentences to sing. I think it was because the other singers were so strong
and the music is so overwhelming that I started singing a bit louder than
usual and forcing my voice. The conductor was looking at me. My voice was
gone. It was a terrible experience.’
Kaufmann realized he would have to seek advice, and the Gurnemanz of that
production recommended him to a new teacher, the American baritone Michael
Rhodes, then based in Trier, only an hour from Saarbrücken. ‘He told me what
I was doing was completely wrong for my voice. “Open your mouth, relax, let
the sound come out without manipulating it,” he said. It sounds easy, but it
took me a long time to sort it out. When I came back from the summer
holidays that year, my first part was Don Ottavio [at the Goethe-Theater in
Bad Lauchstädt], and everybody said it was terrible! Even my wife—who was my
colleague in Saarbrücken, although at this time she was not yet my wife, nor
even my girlfriend—told me recently that every single note was flat and it
was horrible! People thought I had really screwed up and that I would
probably ruin my voice in a couple of years. I was so far off track that in
order to find out where the centre was, I had to go all the way to the other
extreme of my voice, cuffing out the high registers and only searching for
sound down at the bottom. It sounded not even like a baritone, and you would
think that there was no high voice at all.’
In
spring 1996, after disagreements with the management about repertoire,
Kaufmann decided not to renew his contract in Saarbrücken. ‘I was hoping for
the new Mozart roles I needed to learn and some of the lighter bel canto
repertoire, but they only offered me some crappy little parts, so I went
freelance. I had been lucky in the spring of 1996 to do an audition to sing
the title role in The Student Prince in Heidelberg during the summer. They
do it every year—mostly for American tourists, I think—in the open air in
the castle, and it’s really romantic. We had so much fun, as much fun as the
people we were playing!’ A YouTube clip from that production shows a
fresh-faced, boyish Kaufmann, not yet an accomplished actor but displaying a
wonderfully ringing lyric tenor and oodles of charm. Later the same year he
sang in his first premiere, Antonio Bibalo’s Die Glasmenagerie in Trier.
This gained him international coverage, including a mention in this
magazine, Thomas Luys describing him as a ‘young, highly talented tenor’ who
‘took first place among the fine role-portrayals by the ensemble’.
With no contract, Kaufmann set about auditioning for the leading Mozart
roles he had been denied in Saarbrücken. When he sang Tamino’s aria for the
management in Würzburg they immediately offered him a two-year contract, but
his experience in Saarbrücken put him off the idea. ‘I asked if they would
take me just for The Magic Flute. The Intendant didn’t want to, but because
the director heard me—”I need this guy to sing Tamino,” he said—they asked
if I would be free to sing just this production. Of course, I said I was. I
did six weeks of rehearsals, but I sang only the opening night, because the
Intendant didn’t want to pay my fee for more than one performance. I was one
of three tenors singing Tamino, and later, when the others were sick, they
asked me to come back, but I said no. They had their chance to offer me more
shows, but they didn’t take it. A pity, as I liked the production.’
Würzburg’s loss was Stuttgart’s gain, as Pamela Rosenberg, then Stuttgart’s
opera director, snapped him up for the 1997-8 season. “‘Have you done
Barbiere?” she asked. I said, “No” —“OK, you have the next revival of
Barbiere. Have you done Traviata?” “No. no, how could I?”—”OK, you’ve got
Traviata.” I was thinking, “Whaaat?” My first new production was a small
part in Szymanowski’s King Roger, as the patriarch Edrisi. I was very old in
it, with my hair whited-up. Jaquino came soon after. I also got to sing my
Mozart roles: Ferrando, Tamino and Belmonte.’
Soon, word began to spread of the outstanding young tenor, whose acting
skills were beginning to catch up with his vocal talent and natural stage
presence. In 1997 he was one of the young singers hand-picked by Giorgio
Strehler for his Piccola Scala production of Cosi fan tutte, which the
director never lived to complete. It was seen in Milan in 1998, and the
following year he made his debut at La Scala as Jaquino. Important
international debuts soon came flooding in: Salzburg (a student in Doktor
Faust) and Brussels (Belmonte) in 1999, concerts in Edinburgh, and his first
operatic appearances in Switzerland in 2000. In 2001, I saw (but didn’t
hear) him as Wilhelm Meister in Nicholas Joel’s Toulouse production of
Mignon opposite Susan Graham (he was suffering from a bad cold and he acted
while Benjamin Butterfield sang), and he made his US debut as Cassio for
Lyric Opera of Chicago.
His first stage performances here in the UK came relatively late—four years
after his sensational Edinburgh appearances, by which time he was almost a
fixture at the festival. As well as Lieder—I remember a memorable
Dichterliebe at the Queen’s Hall, and Usher Hall late-nights of Die schöne
Müllerin and the Schoenberg chamber reduction of Das Lied von der Erde—he
also sang three roles in concert: Max in Der Freischütz, Flamand in
Capriccio and Stolzing in Die Meistersinger. The trajectory of Kaufmann’s
career suggests a latter-day Wunderlich—one of the tenors he most most
admires — although Kaufmann has already outlived his great compatriot by
three years, and has tackled roles that fate prevented Wunderlich from
singing.
Kaufmann’s
opera recordings are, sadly, few, most of them taken from live performances,
but they include rarities such as Marschner’s Der Vampyr and Carl Loewe’s
Die Drei Wünsche. Additionally, several of his Zürich roles, and his
extraordinary Don José from Covent Garden in 2006, have been preserved on
DVD. (For those who may have missed Kaufmann in his early, more lyric
repertoire, there are precious YouTube clips of his Milan Ferrando and a
concert in which he sings Tamino’s ‘Dies Bildnis’.) Earlier this year Decca
issued a portrait album in which Kaufmann ranged broadly across his German,
Italian and French repertoire, with particularly fine accounts of Faust’s
‘Salut! Demeure’ from Gounod’s opera and ‘Nature immense’ from Berlioz’s
Damnation. A meltingly lovely Prize Song whets the appetite for his first
stage performances of Stolzing, when he eventually tackles it (there are no
immediate plans, but Lohengrin in both Munich and Bayreuth loom, next summer
and in 2010 respectively).
In summer 2008 Kaufmann made his first commercial opera recording, a rare
foray into the studios for EMI, as Pinkerton to Angela Gheorghiu’s Madama
Butterfly, the latest in Antonio Pappano’s continuing (one hopes) series of
the Puccini operas. The idea to cast Kaufmann rather than Gheorghiu’s
husband and regular recording partner Roberto Alagna (who has since defected
to DG) was the soprano’s. ‘It was first talked about around the time of my
Covent Garden debut in La rondine with Angela. This Butterfly recording is
an Angela project, and it was she who made it happen. Not many companies are
making studio recordings of opera. Very often now, it’s live from the
theatre or a combination of concerts and patch sessions. Much as I love
working in the studio, especially with Tony, it’s more difficult to work up
as much adrenalin as you do on stage.’
But presumably, this is an opera he won’t sing in the theatre? ‘Well, that
depends. From the musical point of view, it’s gorgeous. But the character
is, er, not easy to fulfil. It’s not because Pinkerton is unsympathetic, but
I always try to search inside my own character for traits that are similar
at least to the one I have to play on stage. So far, I didn’t find any!’, he
says, with a loud guffaw. At the sessions in the Sala Sinopoli of the Parca
della Musica in Rome, Kaufmann’s dark, grainy tenor exulted in the love duet
with Gheorghiu’s delicate yet sensual Butterfly. His Italian, learned as a
child on those frequent family holidays, sounded idiomatic even next to the
native members of the supporting cast and chorus. He clearly loves singing
Italian music and he admits to being a fan of Franco Corelli. ‘Yes, but I
try not to listen to him too much—enough perhaps to get a sense of the style
of singing Italian repertoire, but without the extended high notes he liked
to sing.’ He would surely be optimum casting for Puccini’s Des Grieux today.
‘I’d love to try it, but not many houses are doing it.’
As
Kaufmann’s star ascends, that may all change. He has yet to play Hoffmann,
another role he was born to sing, but doubtless that will come in the near
future, presumably in Zürich, where he remains loyal to the opera house. He
should have made his role debut as Werther at Covent Garden last season, but
the rescheduling of a Zürich production of Carmen scuppered that. ‘Maybe it
would have been possible to say, “I won’t do it. Tough!”, but Zürich have
supported me at times when many other theatres had no idea who I was, and so
I wanted to show them that I feel connected to this theatre. On the other
hand, the change of the dates left a small gap in my schedule which enabled
me to come to Covent Garden for my debut as Cavaradossi.’
In future, Zürich will have to join the queue with Covent Garden, the Met,
Chicago, Vienna. Berlin and, latterly, his home town of Munich. ‘I would
love to go back to live in Munich, which is where I come from, but it wasn’t
really possible until quite recently. For Peter Jonas, I was almost
non-existent. I only made my official debut—apart from jumping in for other
singers — in 2007, as Tamino. And after that they said, “Ja, but now we need
to do something—can you do a new production next season?”, and I said, “You
have to be kidding!” Of course, I was fully booked. As soon as Nikolaus
Bachler was announced as the new Intendant, I contacted him and said,
“Listen, if you want me to sing in this house, I would be very happy to, but
you will have to book me now.” And that’s what he did.’
For the present, and while his daughter is in school, he intends to stay put
in Zurich. Yes. I think so. I mean, things can change, and already I have
difficulty finding time in the schedule to fulfil the precise terms of my
contract, because there is so much I need to do, and everybody invites me
now. You have to share the cake! It’s becoming a hit of a challenge to fit
everything in.’ Last season, Covent Garden was lucky to get two slices of
the Kaufmann cake—his Alfredo and Cavaradossi—but this season his London
fans will have to travel to Paris, Venice, Zürich or Munich to see him. That
or wait for his Don Carlos in the revival of Nicholas Hytner’s staging in
just under a year, with baited breath. |
die übrigen Bilder im Artikel
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