Clasart to capture Kasarova´s Carmen debut

With this festival Carmen premiere from the Zurich Opera in June 2008, Clasart is documenting Vesselina Kasarova’s highly anticipated debut in the title role. Having sung all the big arias and duets in concerts she says herself that the role is not so much a challenge for her voice but rather for her acting. Keen on breaking the cliché that Carmen is this erotic super woman as she was so often shown in the past, she refers to the intimacy of Bizet’s music and to the complexity of the score. This is what she wants to elaborate. Kasarova’s Don José is Jonas Kaufmann, hottest tenor of the moment, who was celebrated with standing ovations at his role debut last year in London. Together with conductor Franz Welser-Möst, Matthias Hartmann, the new director of the Burgtheater in Vienna, promises an intimate play far beyond all folkloristic tradition. In addition to the programme, Clasart can also offer a 45-minute feature on Jonas Kaufmann, a fascinatingly close portrait produced around the rehearsals for Carmen yet also focussing on the tenor’s incredibly fast recent career that has been compared by the community of professional opera star watchers with Sleeping Beauty waking up on stage of the Zurich Opera House…