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Jonas Kaufmann

The Age of Puccini

Decca Records

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Jonas Kaufmann, short interview
Eva Marton 70th Birthday Gala in Budapest with Jonas Kaufmann 16-06-2013
1 Puccini: Che gelida manina - La Boheme  
2 Puccini: Che gelida manina - Tosca  
3 Puccini: Che gelida manina - La rondine  
4 Ponchielli: Si, questa estrema grazia - I Lituani  
5 Ponchielli: Cielo e mar! - La Gioconda  
6 Boito: Dai campi, dai prati  
7 Boito: Giunto sul passo estremo  
8 Mascagni: Apri la tua finestra - Iris  
9 Mascagni: Intanto, amici, qua, beviamone un bicchiere! - Lola  
10 Mascagni: Mamma! Mamma, quel vino e generoso - Mamma Lucia  
11 Leoncavallo: Recitar! ... Vesti la giubba - Pagliacci  
12 Leoncavallo: Musette! ... Testa adorata - La Boheme  
13 Cilea: E la solita storia del pastore  
14 Cilea: L'anima ho stanca  
15 Cilea: La dolcissima effigie  
16 Zandonai: Giulietta, son io - Giulietta e Romeo  
17 Giordano: Amor ti vieta - Fedora  
18 Giordano: Amor ti vieta - Colpito qui m'avete ... Un di all'azzurro spazio  
19 Giordano: Amor ti vieta - Come un bel di di maggio  
20 Giordano: Amor ti vieta - Vicino a te  
21 Refice: Ombra di nube  
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Jonas Kaufmann became the first German tenor to sing Cavaradossi at the Metropolitan Opera in 103 years. He shaped Puccini's music with exceptional elegance, balancing the character's essential revolutionary fervor with a heart-stopping tenderness. Critics and audiences received the portrayal ecstatically. Listeners familiar with Kaufmann's artistry in German and French repertoire exclusively will be astonished by his affinity for Italian music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Having welcomed him as Cavaradossi in 2008, Covent Garden presented his first Maurizio in 2010 and his debuts as Des Grieux in Manon Lescaut in 2014 and as Andrea Chénier in 2015. The current collection highlights many of these roles as recorded for Decca.

  • Jonas Kaufmann - 'Puccini Love Affairs.' A star tenor and six divas / The Times
    Posted At: September 25, 2024
    Hailed as “the world’s greatest tenor” by The Telegraph, Jonas Kaufmann has performed over 70 roles in the world’s leading opera houses. The New York Times has described him as having “clarion top notes, the blend of virility and tenderness in his singing,” and praised his “refined musicianship.” Not only a great vocal technician, his performances are also praised for their dramatic impact, “He embodies eac...

  • NYC's Park Avenue Armory presents Jonas Kaufmann in world premiere of 'Doppelganger' / BroadwayWorld
    Posted At: August 29, 2023
    Breaking the conventions of traditional classical performance, Doppelganger dissects and expands upon the song cycle, incorporating additional Schubert repertory.BroadwayWorld's A.A. Cristi writes…..This September, Park Avenue Armory presents the world premiere of  Doppelganger, a bespoke Armory commission that reimagines Franz Schubert's rarely staged song cycle Schwanengesang (“Swan Song”) as a multi...

  • The spirit of love is indeed manifest in Jonas Kaufmann, Helmut Deutsch - Liszt: Freudvoll und Leidvoll
    Posted At: October 19, 2021
    After their album Selige Stunde, Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch used the lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, to make a further series of recordings. Their second album of songs is devoted to Franz Liszt, a composer for whom both feel a special affinity and whose music has long featured in their shared concert career. Together with a group of six other songs including Vergiftet sind meine L...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - It's Christmas! makes 'theartsdesk: Christmas CDs 2020'
    Posted At: December 19, 2020

    Jonas Kaufmann – It's Christmas! is an album of two halves. Disc one a generous selection of mostly German carols, Kaufmann accompanied by the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg. He's in good voice. The arrangements are fine, and it's an agreeable listen. Disc 2 shakes things up a bit. Kaufmann singing Holst and Vaughan Williams is fun – the English pronunciation is good, piquing our curiosity ...

  • We got drunk and listened to Jonas Kaufmann - It's Christmas.... Oh, what fun / VAN
    Posted At: November 27, 2020
    VAN's Olivia Giovetti and Jeffrey Arlo Brown writes…Considering the bleak happenings that have defined 2020, we can all be thankful for one grand unifying event that restored a little bit of our faith in humanity: Jonas Kaufmann released a Christmas album. Not just any Christmas album: a two-hour, 42-track deluxe set of everything from traditional Alpine tunes (“Es wird scho glei dumpa”) to 20th-century sta...

  • On 'Selige Stunde,' Jonas Kauffman and Helmut Deutsch bounce like precisely synchronized trampolinists / LIMELIGHT
    Posted At: November 19, 2020

    With concert halls, studios and airports closed the pandemic has forced Jonas Kauffman to downsize from belts and braces Otello and sumptuous Viennese tributes to something smaller and closer to home. So, he got in touch with his old mate pianist Helmut Deutsch and suggested they make a welcome return to their neglected Lieder repertoire. They put together a running order – "It's our own personal w...

  • Sony Classical announces new 'Otello' with Jonas Kaufmann / OPERAWIRE
    Posted At: January 20, 2020

    Sony Classical has announced a new recording of Verdi's "Otello" starring Jonas Kaufmann in the title role, and is set for release in March. The new recording is also set to star Carlos Alvarez as Iago and Federica Lombardi as Desdemonda with Antonio Pappano conducting the orchestra and choir Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. This album will mark Kaufmann's first CD recording of the role, which he ha...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - L'Opera makes NPR Music's Top 10 Classical Albums Of 2017
    Posted At: December 19, 2017

    Hefty, handsome and strong, like a smoky, hand-crafted bourbon, the voice of tenor superstar Jonas Kaufmann, continues to thrill on his new album of French arias. He's got the brawn, and the baritone-like timbre, to sing the heavier Wagner and Verdi roles, but it's impressive to hear how well this generally lighter, French fare fits his voice. There's plenty of requisite muscle in Bizet's...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - Pourquoi me reveiller makes NPR: Best 100 Songs of 2017
    Posted At: December 13, 2017

    The German superstar tenor virtually owns the role of Massenet's lovesick Werther today. Jonas Kaufmann has both the brawn and the brains to portray the high-maintenance romantic who gradually goes nuts (and kills himself) by the time the final curtain falls. The voice, handsome and smoky with a baritone's timbre, is manly, and furnishes plenty of power to pour out Werther's anguish. But ther...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - A Tenor At The Top / NPR: All Things Considered
    Posted At: October 2, 2017

    What does it take to be an opera superstar? Jonas Kaufmann should know. He's been called "the world's greatest tenor." Kaufmann has the voice. He's also got the onstage charisma, the movie-star good looks, the ambition, even a little controversy - and a brand new album. But actually, it's not that easy being the top tenor. Kaufmann, like all opera singers, is a vocal athlete, sing...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - L'Opera pays homage to operatic splendor and elegance / WFMT Radio
    Posted At: September 30, 2017

    Jonas Kaufmann's L'Opera pays homage to a magnificent era of opera that defined musical splendor and elegance, in his new album of 19th-century French opera arias and duets. His selection of music for tenor spans this momentous period, starting with "Rachel, quand du Seigneur" from Halévy's La Juive (1835), through two of Bizet's greatest works, "La fleur que tu m'avais jet&eac...

  • Jonas Kaufmann receives the ECHO KLASSIK Award for 'Bestseller Of The Year'
    Posted At: July 27, 2017

    Jonas Kaufmann receives the ECHO KLASSIK Award for Bestseller Of The Year. The ECHO KLASSIK trophies will be handed out on Sunday, 29 October 2017 during a gala event in the Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall in Hamburg. All of the artists receiving an ECHO KLASSIK this year have made outstanding contributions to Classical Music in the 2016/17 music year. Their performances have brought audiences clo...

  • Jonas Kaufmann/Vienna Philharmonic - Mahler is KUCI 'Featured CD'
    Posted At: June 26, 2017

    The popular tenor Jonas Kaufmann is known for his diverse repertoire. From Puccini to Wagner to Bizet, he has achieved critical acclaim both for purity of voice and thoughtful interpretation. On this recording he sets himself a new challenge. The six songs that make up this song cycle, (Mahler himself called it a symphony), were originally written to be sung by two voices, a baritone and a tenor. Kaufman...

  • Jonas Kaufmann's 'Nessun dorma - The Puccini Album' Makes Iowa Public Radio's 2015 Mega-Meta-List
    Posted At: January 15, 2016

    Today's output of classical albums is (pardon me while I scribble on the back of an envelope) something like triple what it was a generation ago. I won't vouch for that exact ratio, but I will for Anne Midgette's description of how it feels: "Keeping up with the stream of new releases is like trying to drink from a fire hose." Now imagine trying to capture a hose's jet...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - The Puccini Album / ClassicsToday
    Posted At: November 14, 2015

    Jonas Kaufmann has been around now long enough for any glaring faults to have appeared and been criticized; the best we've been able to do is accuse him of crooning occasionally and lacking squillo on top notes. His preparation always seems to be diligent, his use of dynamics, though occasionally exaggerated, is both musical and in character, his phrasing is utterly idiomatic, and the tone handsome and h...

  • Opera News - First Look: Jonas Kaufmann's "Nessun dorma"
    Posted At: October 30, 2015

    After years of singing Giacomo Puccini's heroes on stage to vast critical and audience ac­claim, Jonas Kaufmann has finally recorded an album entirely devoted to the world's most-loved opera composer. 'Nessun dorma' on Sony Classical includes a selection of the composer's stupendous tenor arias drawn from Puc­cini's greatest operas, including Turandot,&...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - Nessun Dorma, The Puccini Album / WFMT: New Release Of the Week
    Posted At: October 25, 2015

    Described by The Daily Telegraph as "the world's greatest tenor", Jonas Kaufmann dedicates his new album to the most popular Italian opera composer of all time, Giacomo Puccini. It features the most loved aria of all time, ‘Nessun Dorma', alongside stunning pieces from Manon Lescaut, La Boheme, Tosca, and more. Together with Jonas Kaufmann, this album includes celebrated Royal Opera House c...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - The Puccini Album / Buffalo News
    Posted At: October 11, 2015

    Nessun Dorma, The Puccini Album, Jonas Kaufmann, tenor, Orchestra e Coro dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Antonio Pappano, conductor (Sony). My dad used to say that the line separating Puccini and Broadway was faint, and listening to this disc I remembered his opinion and agreed with it. I cannot imagine anyone who loves "The Phantom of the Opera" not thrilling to the love duet from "La Bo...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - Nessun Dorma: The Puccini Album is an NPR 'First Listen'
    Posted At: September 3, 2015

    LISTEN TO THE FULL ALBUM Yes, this is the Jonas Kaufmann Puccini album that Kaufmann wants you to hear. Last month the opera star took to his Facebook page to discourage fans from purchasing a competing Puccini release newly recycled by his former record company. It's just one of the occupational hazards of being routinely labeled as "the greatest" and "most important" tenor of our day in papers...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - You Mean the World to Me / Classical Candor review
    Posted At: October 29, 2014

    This disc is for fans of international superstar Jonas Kaufmann, fans of early twentieth-century stage and screen songs, and maybe fans of Romantic nostalgia as well. German operatic singer Jonas Kaufmann says that the idea for the album You Mean the World to Me came to him at the end of a concert when he had finished singing a light number for a crowd of 20,000 delighted admirers. He thought, "Why ...

  • Jonas Kaufmann performs at Syndey Opera House / The Guardian review
    Posted At: August 10, 2014

    Superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann is the type of man your mother warned you about. His rock star looks are equal parts Antonio Banderas, George Clooney and Eric Bana – he has the Spaniard's gaze, Clooney's statesman-like poise and is an incredible Hulk in the high notes department. With a face that has graced Vogue, this tenor is the opera world's closest thing to a Hollywood heartthrob. But does ...

  • The passion of Jonas Kaufmann / The Australian interview
    Posted At: August 8, 2014

    Jonas Kaufmann is almost certainly the greatest tenor in the world right now, a dashingly handsome German with an extraordinary voice, whose career is reaching new peaks with each year, even month that passes. In February, Kaufmann ­"provoked one of the greatest ovations in recent memory", according to the news agency Bloomberg, at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, for his interpretation o...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - The Verdi Album / Audiophile Audition review
    Posted At: August 3, 2014

    Jonas Kaufmann is certainly that rarity among tenors-one that can almost sing anything and come away from it unscathed, either critically or in audience reaction. The last 40 years has been so empty in terms of a bullpen of tenors who can tackle virtually every important role out there that when someone this good comes along we are allowed a little leeway in our googly-eyed musings. READ THE FULL Audioph...

  • Tenor Jonas Kaufmann seeking passion, not perfection / The Sydney Morning Herald interview
    Posted At: August 1, 2014

    Jonas Kaufmann is sitting opposite me at a table on the terrace of London's Royal Opera House. The roofs of Covent Garden are spread out beneath us and in the distance the capital's spires, steeples and domes are lit up by July sunshine. The 45-year-old German tenor takes a sip of black tea and pushes a hand through the mop of greying curls his fans like to call Byronic. He is wearing silver-framed ...

  • Jonas Kaufmann interview with The Opera Blog
    Posted At: July 29, 2014

    Jonas Kaufmann can remember the moment he knew he'd ‘made it', in almost filmic detail. It was the night of his Metropolitan Opera debut, and he was standing in the wings waiting to take his solo curtain call. Singing Alfredo opposite Angela Gheorghiu in her signature role, Violetta in La Traviata, Kaufmann was vividly aware that everyone had come to see her. ‘At that time, I was...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - Schubert: Winterreise / Opera News review
    Posted At: July 15, 2014

    This is a gem of a performance, but one that bucks current trends. The bleak nature of Schubert's Winterreise, with two-thirds of its songs in minor keys, is often taken as an invitation to probe, analyze and even diagnose its protagonist. In the final song, "Der Leiermann" (The Hurdy-gurdy Man), the traveler, totally undone, will wind up identifying with the village idiot, a fate treated so...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - Schubert: Winterreise / The Buffalo News review
    Posted At: July 8, 2014

    Tenor Jonas Kaufmann, while an adventurous singer, brings a lot of low-key subtlety to this Winterreise. He is wise in not joining the legions of singers who always seem out to reinvent the wheel. Instead, though his delivery is free and he sometimes surprises you, he seems confident that his own lyricism and grace can carry the day, and they do. Helmut Deutsch, a veteran accompanist, mirrors his sen...

  • Jonas Kaufmann: the complete artist to perform in Australia / Limelight Magazine
    Posted At: June 23, 2014

    The first visit to Australia by the German tenor Jonas Kaufmann is one of the most anticipated events in this yearʼs performing arts calendar. Widely regarded as the finest tenor in the world today, Kaufmann, at 44, is in his prime. Many operatic tenors have enjoyed highly successful careers based largely on the brilliance of their vocal technique alone. The ability of these singers to inhabit a...

  • Jonas Kaufmann: the world's greatest tenor / The Telegraph interview
    Posted At: June 14, 2014

    Jonas Kaufmann is rehearsing the death scene from Puccini's Manon Lescaut. In the interest of avoiding spoilers for those who don't know the French 18th-century story by the Abbé Prévost, I won't say whose death. But Manon Lescaut (which has formed the basis of a classical ballet and two 19th-century operas) is a tragic opera, and Kaufmann does operatic tragedy in a manner to rip your heart...

  • Jonas Kaufmann performing Schubert's Der Linderbaum is KDFC 'Download of the Week'
    Posted At: June 11, 2014

    Each week KDFC - San Francisco eNotes members can download a free mp3 from some of the biggest releases in the world of Classical music. This week's pick is from Jonas Kaufmann performing Schubert's Der Linerbaum from his album Winterreise. Superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann could easily fill his performance calendar with Verdi, Wagner and Puccini. But, for Kaufmann, however much he loves opera, ...

  • Jonas Kaufmann interview with BBC Radio 3: Music Matters
    Posted At: May 31, 2014

    This edition of Music Matters is given to an extended interview with Jonas Kaufmann, recently acclaimed by the New York Times as "currently the most in-demand, versatile and exciting tenor in opera". Tom Service met Kaufmann in London, after a day's rehearsals for Jonathan Kent's new production of Puccini's Manon Lescaut at the Royal Opera House. Since his last interview on Music Matters ...

  • Jonas Kaufmann returns to Sydney / Limelight Magazine review
    Posted At: May 21, 2014

    The potential opera event of the year has moved up a gear today as Opera Australia has announced that superstar tenor, Jonas Kaufmann, will perform a second concert on August 17th at Sydney Opera House. The German tenor, probably the most sought after singer on the planet, will be making his Australian debut as the latest in the increasingly impressive roster of the great and the good heading down un...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - Schubert: Winterreise featured on MPR: New Classical Tracks
    Posted At: May 14, 2014

    For the first time in his 20-year career, tenor Jonas Kaufmann has recorded Winterreise, a cycle of 24 songs by Franz Schubert. It's a setting of poems by Wilhelm Muller that tells the story of a young man wandering through a wintery landscape in despair after learning the woman he loves no longer loves him. Kaufmann says it's important to familiarize oneself with the subject matter before he...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - Schubert: Winterreise is WFMT 'New Release of the Week'
    Posted At: May 11, 2014

    For Jonas Kaufmann, however much he loves opera, he considers interpreting the classical lieder repertory the highest order of singing. It demands far more detailed work than any other vocal discipline, more color, more nuances and a greater range of dynamics. Says Kaufmann, "I think thatWinterreise has the same sort of cathartic effect as a Greek drama: the emotional experience purges the soul...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - Schubert: Winterreise / Audiophile Audition review
    Posted At: April 29, 2014

    The astonishingly brilliant Jonas Kaufmann tells us in the notes to this release that he treats Winterreise in much the same way as an operatic role; it is easy for him to immerse himself in Schubert's character, to become him, and to feel things as the protagonist feels them. This is certainly something that comes across very well in this new recording, yet another in a long line of recent Winterreises ...

  • Jonas Kaufmann - Schubert: Winterreise / News & Observer review
    Posted At: April 26, 2014

    For the male classical singer, Franz Schubert's 1828 song cycle, Winterreise ("Winter Journey") is a tantalizing but elusive prize. Its 24 sections, telling the story of a rejected lover's torment, demand every skill in a singer's arsenal. In this 75-minute dramatic monologue, the performer must express minute gradations of emotion (anger, depression, false hope, death wishes), paying close attention to ...
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