The Met goes a year without Kaufmann
mainThe world’s hottest tenor was down to sing twice at the Metropolitan Opera this season – two performances in Don Jose in Carmen last Wednesday and last night. When he cancelled Wednesday with flu, the Met still expected him to fly in for Saturday. He never got on the plane.
These things happen. But the buzz around Kaufmann, with touts selling tickets at several times their face value, left the Met looking over-dependent once more on a diminishing handful of box-office warhorses.
No Kaufmann means that operagoers will be warier – and probably later – in booking to see a big name. That’s bad for the Met’s finances and for its future planning. This will go down in the annals as the Met’s no-Jonas year.
Is the buzz around Kaufmann specific to the MET?
According to Dutch Radio4 Kaufmann preferred to stay in Italy for recording sessions in stead of flying to New York and back, pretending he had flu.
Sessions were before the Feb. 27 Rome concert Aida.
Over-dependence on big names is a problem of all big name classical music institutions. How is the MET different?
That’s why opera companies really need to focus on interesting repertoire, good production standards, and top-notch musical direction, so that the appearance (or cancellation) of a particular singer doesn’t make or break the show.
This is really a non-story, except for people who apparently take pleasure in the Met Opera’s problems.