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Published: Saturday, 28 December 2024 at 10:30 AM
‘Twice in my career, I missed my cue to appear on stage’: tenor Jonas Kaufmann on his best and worst performances
Read on to find out the Concert Heaven and Concert Hell performances of tenor Jonas Kaufmann…
Jonas Kaufmann… Concert Heaven
Verdi La traviata
Jonas Kaufmann (tenor), Angela Gheorghiu (soprano) et al
The Metropolitan Opera, New York (February 2006)
If I look back through my career, there have been moments where I really was overwhelmed by what had just happened. One, certainly, was my debut at The Met, because that radically changed my career. I’d already performed in many places, at La Scala and Covent Garden, but in 2006 I was finally at The Met, with Angela Gheorghiu in Verdi‘s La traviata.
I was obviously super nervous, because the house is so big, and I’m pretty sure that nobody in New York had heard the name Jonas Kaufmann before – even though I’d sung some parts at the Chicago Lyric Opera beforehand. And then I sang and afterwards the audience burst into applause; it’s in those moments that you tend to turn round and wonder if Plácido Domingo just entered the stage. That was an incredible moment.
The Met: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere
I can’t explain to you honestly why, but for every young singer The Met is the Olympus. You’re pinching yourself and, as they say, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere; and that’s true somehow. When I went back to Europe, wherever I went people said, ‘Oh yes, this is Kaufmann, he had a great success at The Met…’ It was actually almost ridiculous, because I’d been to all these great theatres in Europe, like the Paris Opera, Covent Garden, Munich, Berlin, La Scala… but suddenly Europe takes notice of this young tenor only because he was a success at The Met. I can’t explain it, but it has this special thrill.
The sheer size of that hall causes some anonymity for a performer. It’s a completely different animal to Covent Garden, in terms of size; in London you have the impression you can lean forward and touch the audience. I feel more and more at home over the years in many of those houses. When you come back you know the stagehands, the orchestra musicians and you can find your way to the canteen and back without getting lost.
Jonas Kaufmann… Concert Hell
Bizet Carmen
Jonas Kaufmann (tenor), Vesselina Kasarova (mezzo-soprano) et al
Zurich Opera House (2008)
I can think of several moments. In 1995, I was singing one of the Knappen in Parsifal in Saarbrücken, which is really not much to sing, but I completely lost my voice on stage. I had a cold and at that point I didn’t know how to judge how much I was capable of doing. There was no voice left and I just couldn’t sing. I realised I really need to come up with a back-up plan, learn my technique, or learn to read my instrument better.
Also, I think twice in my career I forgot to enter… The first production that I ever did professionally was Eine Nacht in Venedig, a beautiful operetta by Johann Strauss II, in the small theatre of Regensburg – I was still a student at the conservatory in Munich. We did 36 shows in one season and I have to say I was so bored I was sitting in my dressing room reading. I heard dialogue that I had never heard before and thought, ‘What are they talking about?!’ Then I realised they were improvising because I was not on stage!
I was chatting away and suddenly I thought, ‘Why is it so silent?’
Even worse, when I did Bizet‘s Carmen in Zurich with Vesselina Kasarova, I was down under the stage in the catacombs of the theatre, because I had to climb up from underneath for my entrance in the second act. I was down there chatting about this and that together with the assistant conductor, who was also waiting there; and I said, ‘Why is it so silent?’ We looked at the monitor and saw a completely desperate conductor, and I said, ‘Oh, this is me!’ So I started singing my part without hesitating, and I ran onstage, singing, singing, singing, and I thought, ‘I made it!’ Then when I stop singing, the first thing that Carmen says is ‘Enfin te voilà!’ (Finally you are here!), and the whole house broke down. I realised that it must have been an eternity, almost a minute of silence before I had started singing.
Jonas Kaufmann’s album ‘Puccini Love Affairs’ is out now on Sony Classical