Jonas Kaufmann
Biography
Jonas Kaufmann is now the world’s most successful tenor. He is internationally acclaimed for his roles in Italian, German and French repertoire and he appears at all the leading international opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, the Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opéra and London’s Covent Garden. He also performs regularly at the Salzburg Festival and reaches an audience of millions through his regular cinema and television broadcasts. Last year he was watched by millions worldwide when making his celebrated debut singing at the Last Night of the Proms from London’s Royal Albert Hall and in a special international cinema-cast of his La Scala concert “An Evening with Puccini”. As well as in opera, Jonas Kaufmann also enthralls audiences and critics alike as a lieder recitalist with his accompanist Helmut Deutsch and recently enjoyed great success with his sold-out European concert tours of Puccini arias & Du bist die Welt für mich. Jonas Kaufmann has received numerous awards, most recently the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz), an Opera News Award in New York, and the International Opera Award in London, and was appointed a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. Specialist journals such as Opernwelt, Diapason and Musical America, together with the jury of the ECHO Klassik Awards, have all voted him Singer of the Year. In 2015 his album Nessun dorma – The Puccini Album obtained his best ever general-album chart success in many countries including in Germany, UK, France & Spain. In 2014 he received the German Bambi Award for his album, Du bist die Welt für mich. Both this album and his Verdi Album from 2013 had outstanding success in the German and Austrian general-album charts and were bestsellers in the classical charts – both reaching gold status in Austria. His recording of Schubert’s Winterreise succeeded as the first Lieder album ever to enter the German and Austrian general-album charts.
Current album
Puccini: Love Affairs
Artists Jonas KaufmannRelease Date: 09/13/2024
Following on from his phenomenally successful Grammy-nominated first Puccini album in 2015, “Nessun Dorma”, Jonas Kaufmann now presents a new album of Puccini highlights to mark the composer’s 2024 anniversary year. He has selected for the new recording six great duets and scenes with six outstanding sopranos – legendary love scenes, emotionally-charged Love Affairs.
“What really appealed to me was recording these very different duets with different partners,” says Kaufmann. “With almost all of them I’ve experienced unforgettable moments on stage.”
Manon Lescaut is sung by Anna Netrebko, with whom he has appeared many times over the course of his career. This year alone audiences have heard them together in two productions of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. Tosca is sung by Sonya Yoncheva, who recently partnered with him at the Arena di Verona. The part of Butterfly is sung by Maria Agresta, who will be touring with Kaufmann this October to mark the Puccini centenary and performing some of the repertoire on this album. In the wake of their stunning success in the new Vienna production of Turandot in December 2023, Asmik Grigorian and Jonas Kaufmann now portray the tragic lovers in Il Tabarro. And as in the performances of the opera at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Malin Byström is here once again his partner in La Fanciulla del West. The album also has a debut, with Jonas Kaufmann and Pretty Yende heard together for the first time, in the famous love duet from La Bohème.
Asher Fisch, the album’s conductor, is a regular collaborator of Kaufmann’s: “We’ve known each other for many years. This is also now our second album, after Dolce Vita, which we recorded in Palermo in 2016. This time we went to Bologna, and the brilliant orchestra of the Teatro Comunale, whom I gave a concert with a few years ago.”
The new album also features two of Puccini’s tenor hits that didn’t appear on the first album in 2015: “Che gelida manina” from La Bohème and “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca.
For Jonas Kaufmann, Puccini’s music is and remains a unique phenomenon: “The buttons he pushes with his music still work, a hundred years after his death – and do so in a modern society that is completely jaded from an endless flood of bad news and experiences. Much has been written about Puccini, but as I see it, no one has ever yet been able to explain how he managed to evoke such unbelievably powerful emotions with just a few notes. That is a mystery that probably no AI in the world can comprehend.”
Puccini: Love Affairs will be released internationally on September 13 as limited-edition deluxe CD and on all digital platforms.
Photo credit: Gregor Hohenberg
