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Opera Online, 20 of January, 2015 |
Dominique Adrian |
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Jonas Kaufmann in Andrea Chenier : portrait
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In a decade spent on the world’s great opera stages, Jonas Kaufmann has
established himself as one of the most iconic singers of the day. And in a
career he has built up intelligently and thoughtfully, the roles he takes on
always seem like a major event. Starting tomorrow, Tuesday, January 20th,
through February 6th he will be singing the title role of Andrea Chenier, at
the Royal Opera House, alongside Eva-Maria Westbroek amd Zeljko Lucic. We
are taking this occasion to review the highlights of the German tenor’s
career.
Anyone who saw Verdi’s Otello at the Bastille Opera in
spring 2004 still remembers having heard a very fine Cassio: they have
undoubtedly forgotten who sang Desdemona and Othello; perhaps they recall
that Jean-Philippe Lafont was the wicked Iago. But the interpreter of the
short and thankless role of Cassio left a real impression on the audience.
That was just over ten years ago: this very fine, virtually unknown tenor
was Jonas Kaufmann. We had to wait a while to hear him as Othello, but what
a career he has had in a very productive decade!
And yet there was
nothing dazzling about his beginnings: his two years with the troupe at
Sarrebruck (1994-1996), which he does not remember fondly, preceded a period
of sometimes perfectly respectable engagements but very much limited to the
German-speaking countries and often in routine stagings, with major
stopovers in Zurich, in the ensemble put together by Alexander Pereira, or
in Stuttgart. Actually, these modest beginnings may today be the cornerstone
of the extraordinary force of nature that is Kaufmann: burning himself out
in a few years by responding to every request is simply not his style.
And then, one fine day…. There was no single moment when suddenly
everything changed: The Paris Traviata in 2007 was a revelation for many,
but his reputation had already been growing for years. But his casting in
Lohengrin in the summer of 2009 in Munich was nonetheless a turning point,
when the excellent tenor that Kaufmann had been for ages stopped being one
among many and became a unique artist, a truly creative interpreter whose
like we see only a few times in a century. In this dazzling cast – alongside
Anja Harteros and Wolfgang Koch – he was the oldest: but he was only 40.
Certainly his voice had never before found such a vehicle as this new role
to express his uniqueness for all to see and hear. Among Wagnerian
tenors, there is a necessary tolerance: the task is too difficult not to
give each one of them credit just for managing to sing the notes, to make
the text heard and to be expressive when possible, and the all-out power
that is the stereotype of Wagnerian singing. With Kaufmann, suddenly, there
was everything else: endless dynamic shadings never drowned out by the
orchestra, a sublimation of words like a true lied singer, and the stage
presence that completes this embodiment of the character. Power, ease, but
also fragility: Kaufmann’s voice is not one of those honeyed voices that
flow without harshness, and that is its paradoxical strength. The cracks
that interrupt the flow of sound would not in and of themselves be such as
to disqualify this bronze voice; but the singer’s intelligence is such that
they actually become a plus, instead underscoring the shape of a phrase,
highlighting the dramatic challenge of a response or reinforcing the weight
of the sung word.
In his relationship with the stage, Kaufmann is
equally representative of a new generation of singers who do not think it
beneath them to participate in the more or less heterodox vision of a
director. It is first and foremost a question of professionalism: opera is
an eminently cooperative undertaking, and it cannot work if one of the
parties wants to impose his views on another’s work. But it’s also because
Kaufmann, like many of his generation, has understood that the frozen image
of the solitary idol apart from the real world was no longer acceptable: he
has collaborated with a long list of directors, from Christoph Marthaler to
Hans Neuenfels by way of Richard Jones and Martin Kušej. It is not a matter
of being manipulated at will by an omnipotent master but of participating in
a common effort, dialoguing in mutual respect. The advantages of this new
vision of the opera world can easily be seen in Kaufmann: his stage
involvement nourishes his vocal interpretation, and vice versa. Perhaps that
is the greatest lesson that his career offers.
For a tenor anchored
in the great lyric repertory, it is difficult not to follow this natural
incline which leads from the most lyrical roles to increasingly ponderous
ones; we won’t hazard a guess as to which aspects of this evolution come
from the singer’s ambitions, the natural evolution of his voice, or the
pressing demands of opera directors. Jonas Kaufmann will certainly no longer
sing Tamino or Ferrando as he did around 2000; he approached Wagner through
his more lyrical roles and with Verdi went for characters who were still
part of the Bel Canto tradition, when he wasn’t doing Don Carlo, whose
French ascendancy more concerned with tragic declamation than with dramatic
effect suited him perfectly (we can only hope that some opera house will
finally decide to offer him the original French version). Over the past few
years, there have been more heavy roles, especially in the Verist repertory,
from Adriana Lecouvreur to Tosca; these days it’s Andrea Chénier in London;
in spring the diptych Cavalleria Rusticana/I Pagliacci in Salzburg; at the
Met, it’s Parsifal, which has returned to his career after a long
interruption due to being cast too early, and now we’re awaiting Othello.
But this evolution in Kaufmann has been accompanied by real caution in how
each season is organised: between each opera series, long stretches are
devoted to lieder and to concerts with orchestra, and this season with
operetta. He could have gone in other directions, and it is regrettable that
Kaufmann has declined to play Aeneus in Les Troyens; but the care with which
he manages each role he accepts promises other exciting adventures still to
come.
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