Munich-born Jonas Kaufmann, completed his formal music studies at his native city’s School of Music and then attended master classes with Hans Hotter, James King, and Josef Metternich. His career began in 1994 at the Staatstheater in Saarbrücken, where he went on to learn the lyric tenor repertoire. Soon he was engaged by such major venues as the Stuttgart and Hamburg Staatsoper, Chicago Lyric Opera, Paris National Opera, and the Salzburg Festival. Since 2001 Jonas Kaufmann has had a close relationship with Zurich Opera, where he has developed roles by Mozart, Schubert (Fierabras), and Gounod (Faust), as well as Wagner’s Parsifal and Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio. Jonas Kaufmann has meanwhile expanded his artistic spectrum considerably, with a strong emphasis on the Italian and French arena, as well as a focus on roles for dramatic tenor. As a result, he has interpreted Alfredo from Verdi’s La traviata for the Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere, sung his first Stolzing in Die Meistersinger at the Edinburgh Festival, appeared as Don José in Carmen at Covent Garden and La Scala, and performed at the Vienna Staatsoper as Des Grieux in Massenet’s Manon. Other roles he has learned include Max in Der Freischütz, Cavaradossi in Tosca, and Rodolfo in La Bohème; in 2009 he added Massenet’s Werther and Wagner’s Lohengrin to his repertoire; Jonas Kaufmann also sings the latter this summer at the Bayreuth Festival. In the concert hall, he has performed under such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann, and Franz Welser-Möst. Jonas Kaufmann’s first solo CD, titled Romantic Arias (2008), quickly shot up in the classical charts; this was followed in 2009 by a recording of Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL debut on September 2, 2004 in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with Simon Rattle conducting the Berlin Philharmonic.
May 2010