Jonas Kaufmann

This fantastic DVD captures one of the most auspicious operatic debuts of 2009, Jonas Kaufmann’s Lohengrin. We have here a record of that rarest of things: a night at the opera when everything worked. The singing is outstanding across the board, the excellent orchestral playing is guided by a conductor of vision and excitement and the production is insightful, stimulating and intelligent…

– Simon Thompson, MusicWeb International

Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna is once again this year the beautiful backdrop for a classical music concert in a class of its own. Every year, the famous summer night concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra takes place there. This year, the orchestra is conducted by Valery Gergiev, who has been working with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for many years. For the first time this year, the German world star Jonas Kaufmann will be the star guest at the Summer Night Concert. The programme is still secret, but as every year it will be a particularly beautiful mixture of classical hits and special works by Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Jacques Offenbach, Jules Massenet, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Emmerich Kálmán, Maurice Jarre, Aram Khachaturian and Giacomo Puccini.

In a Christmas album that is a gift itself, Jonas Kaufmann the most acclaimed operatic tenor of the age echoes his own holiday memories and joys with It s Christmas!, celebrating the most festive time of the year with a unique selection of beloved songs and carols. This uniquely rich and diverse holiday album features 40 favorites that reflect the many facets of Christmas, from ancient Christian hymns to contemporary pop classics.

This Covent Garden production of Bizet’s Carmen, makes a vivid musical and dramatic impression. Director Francesca Zambello creates a properly Spanish atmosphere, filling the stage with a profusion of detailed characters. In Act One’s town square each of the many soldiers, strollers, cigarette factory girls, and children are individuals, so there’s a bustle of continuous, realistic activity. That attention to detail carries over to the rest of the opera, involving viewers in the action. Tanya McCallin’s sets are a perfect foil for the direction: simple, movable panels that serve as lightly sketched backdrops for the town square, a tavern, the smugglers’ mountain hideaway, and the final scene in front of the bull ring. But what makes this Carmen special is the singing and acting of the principals… –Dan Davis

Hard on the heels of a triumphant Lohengrin, Decca follows up with an equally astonishing debut performance from Jonas Kaufmann: Goethe’s love-lorn hero Werther, in Massenet’s romantic opera. His premiere appearance in the role, in Paris in January 2010, took the French operatic world by storm, his performance being hailed by Le Monde: “Werther is portrayed by the tenor of the moment, the German Jonas Kaufmann. He brings to the part a sublime timbre (warm, at times “baritonal” and musky), exceptional musicality, a very wide palette of tonal shadings and immaculate diction. Add to that his histrionic gifts and matinée-idol appeal and you’ve got a cocktail of qualities that rarely all come together at the opera.”…

Jonas Kaufmann has taken care in his professional choices not to be pigeonholed and has successfully tackled roles in German, French, and Italian operas ranging from Monteverdi and Mozart to Schoenberg and world premieres, as well as singing lieder and symphonic works. These verismo arias show off Kaufmann's mastery of this repertoire and his ease in bringing an authentically Italianate sensibility to this music.

Martin Kušej’s thrilling contemporary interpretation of Verdi’s late period opera proved the perfect vehicle for the Bavarian State Opera’s dream team of Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros. The imposing sets’ references to terrorism and the implosion of modern civilization bring the opera’s inherent drama to a breathtaking pinnacle. Specialist promo & marketing activity.

I am normally not a stickler for traditional settings in opera productions. Tosca ’s act II, for instance, with Scarpia and Tosca together and Cavaradossi nearby being tortured, or act III, with first Cavaradossi alone in captivity, then he and Tosca together with the firing squad, can be performed in many different settings and certainly be effective. Act I, however, is set by the librettists and composer Puccini in a church, and it must be played in a church or chapel or the like, because there are just too many references in the libretto and in the music itself to get by with anywhere else. This DVD production from the Zurich Opera House directed by Robert Carsen inanely sets the first act in the auditorium of a theater (with folding chairs no less) and starts to lose all credibility almost immediately…

FANFARE: Bill White