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The Telegraph, 15 October 2017 |
By Rupert Christiansen |
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Jonas Kaufmann keeps his personality hidden in this unexceptional documentary
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Trailed on the voiceover as “arguably the greatest singer of his
generation”, the German tenor Jonas Kaufmann was the subject of a leisurely,
amiable – and at 90 minutes, over-extended – documentary. Director John
Bridcut followed him through a series of globe-trotting triumphs,
interspersed with the usual snatches of interview and talking heads (briefly
including myself) spouting compliments and platitudes.
There were
cute glimpses of the star cheering Bayern Munich on from the stands and
sneaking into Fortnum and Mason’s to buy shortbread, but higher drama was
signally lacking; the best moment came when Kaufmann was standing in the
wings seconds before his debut at Covent Garden in the demanding title-role
of Verdi’s Otello. Realising he had forgotten his sword, he sprinted back to
the dressing room to collect it – and it emerged that this incident that
would have reduced others to blind panic or screaming rage was for him
apparently only a great laugh. He has cool, that’s for sure.
Kaufmann gave little away; his girlfriend, Opera director Christiane Lutz,
was only distantly glimpsed, his family stayed out of the picture entirely
and we learned little about his background and nothing about his inner life.
He is a wonderfully handsome man, with a dazzling smile and a hearty
Teutonic sense of humour, but he is not tremendously interesting. Here, he
seemed neither inspired nor neurotic – what drives him, what terrifies him,
what goes on inside remained undetectable.
Kaufmann faces two ongoing
battles. One is to keep his more infatuated knicker-throwing fans at bay,
which he does with exemplary grace and politeness. The other is to preserve
his vocal health: we heard about the five months he spent virtually silent
while waiting for a persistently bursting blood vessel in his throat to
heal, we saw how a sniff turned into bronchitis and we watched his throat
being massaged. He insisted on comparing himself to a sportsman who can only
deliver when in peak physical condition, but he seemed super-sensitive in
this area, and the programme soft-pedalled on the fact that he has developed
a deplorable record for exasperating cancellations, in contrast to other
singers who have more robust methods of coping with minor respiratory
infections.
Yet he also emerged as a good-tempered, popular colleague
who enjoys performing, as well as a superb musician with a rock-solid
technique – Antonio Pappano commented on his miraculous breath control and
his father-figure pianist Helmut Deutsch had some interesting things to say
about his early development. Opera buffs will have been excited by the
programme’s hints that he will one day sing Britten’s Peter Grimes and
Wagner’s Tristan, but one was left pondering how someone with his sang-froid
plugs into such tortured characters.
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