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Limelight, August 8, 2014 |
by Clive Paget |
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Kaufmann to Sydney, luggage to London
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Star tenor arrives for Oz concerts with bags of charisma but sans
suitcases. |
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Jonas Kaufmann, the biggest operatic draw of the musical year, has arrived
safely in Sydney despite his luggage winding up in London. The star tenor
left Spain following a concert in Barcelona to spend two days acclimatising
in Cairns before heading south.
"Fortunately I had my tails in
hand-luggage just in case," he told a packed press conference at the Sydney
Opera House where he is due to perform the first of three concerts on
Sunday. The German opera sensation chatted informally to Opera Australia's
Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini, joking that perhaps he should keep his
(enforced) jeans, shirt and jacket look if opera is to attract a younger
crowd.
In a wide-ranging discussion Kaufmann reflected on the
profession, choice of program for his Australian debut and the pressures of
being the most sought after singer on the planet. In a carefully husbanded
career, Kaufmann is remarkable among modern singers for being a German
singer equally at home in the Italian repertoire. "My parents went to Italy
on holiday and I picked up the language early", he said, referring to his
discovery that he could sing in Verdi and Puccini. "But it took me a long,
long time to convince people to accept that. People often think inside the
box."
It apparently took him a while to persuade opera managements.
"They'd say, 'you just can’t sing Italian and French and German'. And I'd
say, 'but there's Plácido' – and they'd say 'that doesn’t count – he’s the
exception'. But here we are many years later – and I think we're almost
there".
Among his life lessons were "you can never imitate some one
else – that was one of the first things I learned. You can never be the
second Pavarotti or the second Domingo or Caruso or Corelli." Discussing how
he copes with the demands of singing Siegmund in Die Walküre one night and
Manrico inTrovatore the next he was candid. "You need a technique that makes
your instrument reliable and relaxed so that you don't consume or abuse it.
Let it do its thing. And if this works, it should actually work for every
repertoire."
His programs in Sydney and Melbourne centre on Italian
and French operas – Pagliacci, Tosca, La Forza del Destino, Carmen and
Werther – which might disappoint the Wagner fans, but Kaufmann was keen to
explain his choices. "When you do a concert in a country for the first time
it's not a good idea to do a very specialised program", he said. "I’ve just
done a concert in Barcelona. Two years ago I went there and the Spanish said
'where's all the Wagner, where's all the Wagner!' and I thought: 'Spanish
audience – why would I come and sing Wagner?' But it turns out they love
Wagner. So I came back and did some Spanish themed music and also some
Wagner and immediately people say 'Where's the Werther? Where's the Carmen?'
So you can't please everybody…"
Jonas Kaufmann sings for Opera
Australia in Sydney on August 10 and 17 and in Melbourne on August 14.
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