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Los Angeles Times, JAN 10, 2018 |
By JESSICA GELT |
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Jonas Kaufmann: How do you take Schubert to new heights — and depths?
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German tenor Jonas Kaufmann will give a rare North American recital as
part of the Broad Stage's 2018 Celebrity Opera series on Monday.
He'll be performing Schubert's "Die schöne Müllerin," accompanied by
pianist Helmut Deutsch — the same song cycle the duo recorded for Decca
Records in 2010 to much acclaim.
Kaufmann made his Metropolitan
Opera debut in New York in 2006 in "La Traviata." He's since
distinguished himself as one of the world's finest tenors, earning
critical praise whether singing the title role of "Don Carlos" or taking
the stage as Cavaradossi in "Tosca."
The documentary "Jonas
Kaufmann: An Evening With Puccini," featuring rare footage of a
performance at La Scala in Milan, was released in 2016. For this
feature, we asked the singer to talk about the Schubert he'll be singing
in Santa Monica.
What do you find compelling and
interesting about the Schubert piece in the Broad Stage program, and
what will you try to convey to the audience while you are performing it?
Compared with "Winterreise," the other famous song cycle written by
Franz Schubert, "Die schöne Müllerin" requires an entirely different
approach of interpretation.
In "Winterreise," the basic tone of
depression is present from the outset. You can hear at the start how the
story will end.
This is something you must avoid at all costs in
the case of "Die schöne Müllerin." It's about a young man who is utterly
carefree when he first heads out into the world but who then runs
head-first into trouble. His unrequited love for the miller's daughter
is his first experience of pain.
In order for this innocence to
seem at all credible, the interpreter shouldn't sound too mature. The
early songs are the purest expression of a young man's love of life, and
that's how they should be performed.
As he sets out on his
wanderings, the boy is bursting with energy and self-confidence. The
more successful you are in conveying this mood, the greater the fall and
the bigger the gulf.
That's also why I don't agree with people
when they say that Wilhelm Müller's poems are just texts that Schubert
has "improved" with his music. I believe that Schubert fully recognized
that the apparent simplicity of the poems serves to increase the sense
of distance that is traveled and to heighten the sense of dislocation
between the beginning and the end.
Conveying this to the audience
is a big challenge, and for me this cycle is one of the most demanding
pieces in the entire repertoire of Lieder.
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