JONAS KAUFMANN

I couldn’t help but wondering whether the scheduling last week of two recent productions at the Vienna State Opera, Claus Guth’s TURANDOT and Cyril Teste’s SALOME, on subsequent nights had anything more than the availability of the stars behind it. After all, both portrayed the title characters as abused women scarred by powerful men—not exactly the business-as-usual for these works by Puccini and Strauss, respectively—in pared-down productions that hearkened to the father of psychoanalysis, Sig...

Another year, another Met season without Jonas Kaufmann. Sigh. What’s a music lover to do? His current set of performances is at the Park Avenue Armory’s Drill Hall--in a staged production by Claud Guth, commissioned by the Armory, of Schubert lieder, under the title DOPPELGANGER. It's an evening of autumnal chill through words and music that were “anxious and heavy,” through a heart “utterly alone.”...

The Metropolitan Opera somehow managed to upstage itself on Thursday, when it offered audiences a spectacular recital by Norwegian soprano Lisa Davidsen, with her excellent musical partner James Baillieu, on piano, 12 days before the company’s official opening night (the Jake Heggie-Terrence McNally DEAD MAN WALKING on the 26th). It’ll be a hard act to follow....

The Royal Opera House today announces that sadly Jonas Kaufmann has withdrawn from all performances of Cavalleria rusticana. Mr. Kaufmann is continuing to recover from COVID-19 and is not well enough to sing the remaining performances.  ...

Oh, sure, give us Missy Mazzoli, Nico Muhly, Laura Kaminsky, Kevin Puts, Terence Blanchard, Paul Moravec, Huang Ruo and all the other fabulous composers at work today. But let’s talk about Rossini--and it’s hard for anyone who attended the concert the other night at New York’s 92nd Street Y not to. With tenor Lawrence Brownlee, (bari)tenor Michael Spyres and pianist Myra Huang presenting us with a dizzying array of what Brownlee called “barnburner pieces, back to back,” there was not much more t...

The opening lines of Jonas Kaufmann’s lieder concert at Carnegie Hall Saturday night, weren’t exactly ones that fill the heart with joy: “My songs are filled with poison—why shouldn’t that be true? Into my budding manhood, you poured your poison through.” But to have Kaufmann back in New York was a wondrous thing. And he gave us plenty to be thankful for....

Wagnerians in Concert features sopranos Christine Goerke and Elza van den Heever, tenor Andreas Schager, and baritone Michael Volle, live from the Hessisches Staatstheater, in Wiesbaden, Germany, on May 8. Three Divas showcases sopranos Ailyn Pérez and Nadine Sierra and mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, live from the Opéra Royal-Château de Versailles, in France, on May 22. Both concerts will be streamed live on the Met's website at 1pm EST/7pm CET, and will then be available on demand for 14 days. ...

Wagnerians in Concert features sopranos Christine Goerke and Elza van den Heever, tenor Andreas Schager, and baritone Michael Volle, live from the Hessisches Staatstheater, in Wiesbaden, Germany, on May 8. Three Divas showcases sopranos Ailyn Pérez and Nadine Sierra and mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, live from the Opéra Royal-Château de Versailles, in France, on May 22. Both concerts will be streamed live on the Met's website at 1pm EST/7pm CET, and will then be available on demand for 14 days. ...

PBS has announced that it will air Great Performances at the Met: Jonas Kaufmann in Concert this spring....

Soprano Sonya Yoncheva will perform a live concert from the Schussenried Cloister in southwest Germany as part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series. The program features a tour-de-force of arias from Verdi’s Aida and Il Trovatore; Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, and the rarely performed Le Villi; Dvořák’s Rusalka; and Handel’s Rinaldo....

German operatic tenor Jonas Kaufmann is urging authorities to open up concert halls again. He says that musicians thrive on connecting with people in person, and the lack of ability to do that has been detrimental to him and other performers....

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky and tenor Piotr Beczała will perform a live concert on Saturday, January 23, at 7:00pm CET/1:00pm ET, from the historic Stadthalle in Wuppertal, Germany, as part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series....

Soprano Diana Damrau and tenor Joseph Calleja will perform a live concert on Saturday, October 24, at 7:00pm CET/1:00pm ET, at the Royal Palace of Caserta, Italy, as part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series. ...

It's hardly a secret that during the Met's shutdown, the company has been treating audiences with nightly telecasts of everything from the company's current 'Live In HD' series to some scratchy videos that still had decent sound. All of them, however, can also be found on the Met's online subscription series, THE MET OPERA ON DEMAND, along with some audio highlights of extraordinary Saturday afternoon broadcasts. It's worth shelling out the money for this kind of quality....

The Met has announced a specially-curated, three-week schedule for its Nightly Met Opera Streams, a free series of encore Live in HD presentations and classic telecasts streamed on the company website during the coronavirus closure. The schedule includes an All-Verdi week, a 20th-Century Classics week, and an All-French week....

Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen will perform a live concert on Saturday, August 29, at 7pm CET/1pm ET, from the royal Oscarshall Palace in Oslo, where the soprano sang after winning Norway's Queen Sonja Competition in 2015. ...

The Met's new pay-per-view recital series, Met Stars Live in Concert, continues with tenor Roberto Alagna and soprano Aleksandra Kurzak performing live outdoors from the Château de la Chèvre d'Or, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, in Èze, France....

Even though soprano Renee Fleming had a big farewell to her role as the Marschallin in DER ROSENKAVALIER in the Met’s recent production premiere, she seems far from the end of her career, not only continuing to concertize but even in opera. So, it was no surprise that she showed up on the roster of the Met’s pay-for-view concerts series, Met Stars Live in Concert....

When was the last time you heard a concert at the Met for $20? It could have been Saturday afternoon--with Jonas Kaufmann kicking off an online, live concert series, MET STARS LIVE IN CONCERT. It helped to remind us what we're missing without live opera and stars worth going out of the way for....

As part of the first performance in the new Met Stars Live in Concert series, tenor Jonas Kaufmann sings Cavaradossi's Act III aria from Puccini's “Tosca.'...

The Metropolitan Opera announced its entry into live pay-per-view concert events today, unveiling a lineup of 12 concerts from summer to fall featuring some of opera's biggest stars in striking locations across Europe and the United States....

As part of The Metropolitan Opera's (Met Opera) urgent “The Voice Must Be Heard” fundraising campaign to support and protect the future of opera amid the COVID-19, more than 40 leading opera artists and members of the company's brilliant orchestra and chorus performed from their respective homes all around the world. The unprecedented virtual gathering of Met Opera's principal artists, ensemble, and orchestra, billed as At-Home Gala, was streamed live around the world in 162 countries on 25 Apri...

To conclude the Monday Concert series on 29 June, General Music Director Kirill Petrenko will conduct the Orchestra Academy and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester with music by Arnold Schönberg, Igor Stravinsky, Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss....

We have compiled a list of operas available to stream this week, including productions from The Met, Opéra National de Paris and more....

On April 25, 2020, The Metropolitan Opera presented many of its top ranked artists performing from their homes or where they were staying on that date. Met General Manager Peter Gelb, the master of ceremonies, chatted with Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin as they presented each performer. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, artists were recorded alone or with people they know well....