The tenor describes his Tannhauser role at Salzburg Easter Festival.
Watch video here.
Who on earth can he be talking about?
In other news, Andris Nelsons still cannot give an interview in German.
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Interesting! I was wondering when he would get to Tannhauser, suprised it was not earlier. So when does he get to Tristan?
He already has ventured into Tristan territory…
He got there in July 2021 in Munich.
…and before that in Boston and New York with the Boston Symphony, with Camilla Nylund as Isolde, Andris Nelsons conducting. I heard Act 2 at Symphony Hall in Boston. Not impressed, even though sitting in the middle section of the second balcony (Seiji Ozawa liked to sit in that section when listening to his band). In July 2021 I was able to hear the Munich tristan via Bavarian Radio online. JK sounded good – but then, I suspect some credit goes to the microphones….
It is a voice of moderate volume, rather nothing new here. Kaufman is not about decibels only interpretation – and here he almost never fails. In this case he didn’t disappoint either, I was in Munich and left very moved. Kaufmann didn’t have any problems with the role, the third act didn’t cause him any difficulties, you could see that he really worked on the role.
What if the video is for the international public of the festival and Nelson was not asked to speak german?
Only the Germans and Austrians speak German – hardly an international language other than parts of Tanzania!!
Beethoven wrote an Italian composer requesting that he not try to write him in German. Beethoven said, that only Germans could speak German, because it was so difficult. Beethoven wrote that letter in poor Italian.
What about Switzerland? It is also an official language of Belgium. *ducks and waits for the casual Belgium bashing on this site to start*
In Africa, German is spoken in Namibia more than Tanzania. Plus, of course, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the east of Belgium, and the Italian Tyrol.
Not to mention in Transylvanian Romania (Hermannstadt, anyone?) and a few enclaves in Hungary.
“In France every Frenchman knows his language from A to Z; the French don’t care what they do actually, as long as they pronounce it properly” (My Fair Lady).
Oy! Yobbo! You forget the Swiss. And given that much of the innovation in the arts, private banking, engineering, etc. come from German-speaking countries, perhaps it’s not quite as parochial as you seem to be.
Oh well I played with him a couple of months ago and his German is ridiculously bad. But you may be right in this case!
Has no one (hello Norman!) noticed that his name is Andris Nelsons?
Incidentally, ORF’s Radio Ö1 will broadcast “Tannhäuser” on 15 April at 19:30 CET and then archived online for a week.
Anyone interested may want to bookmark this URL:
https://oe1.orf.at/programm/20230415/716040/Richard-Wagner-Tannhaeuser-und-der-Saengerkrieg-auf-Wartburg
The Producer in the video also couldn’t speak German, only Italian.
He sung Tristan in Munich with Petrenko in Summer 2021
Shouldn’t you by any chance put that sentence in the headline in inverted commas? – this is what Kaufmann says about the Tannhauser character. Every time you make a post about Kaufmann I am blown away by the extent of your dislike of him and the sophisticated twistedness nature of your work
It woudn’t be Slipped Disc if Norman didn’t play mind games with headlines – it’s his brand. Still, I agree about this one. Before seeing the video, I assumed the post was the usual Kaufmann bashing.
His surname is Nelsons. As he is one of the more significant conductors today, I think we have a duty to get that right.
Unfortunately, this is how people think.
(I’m a little worried about his health; somehow.) He seems a lovely man and is certainly a gifted conductor and I do wish him well.
Well, we do need someone to replace Domingo…
Kaufmann replaced Domingo a long time ago.
Unfortunately, Domingo is still hanging around …
Do they pay him to say something trivial about the part or to actually sing the part ( and the music is everything but trivial) ?
I honestly love how international this video feels. Each person does their interview in a different language and it makes a video about producing a Wagner opera in Salzburg feel inclusive.
How does one conduct an opera in a language one does not speak well enough to give an interview?
How do you coach the singers that is worth a damn?
Do you think that the Italian director speaks German?! (or cares about the language?)
The great German film star Conrad Veidt (1893-1943) made films in the UK in the early 1930s without a grasp of English; he was trying to get out of Nazi Germany permanently as he’d married a Jewish woman and Hitler threatened to destroy his career (or worse) if he didn’t divorce her.
Veidt learned the English scripts in German by heart, in order to understand everything, and then rote learned his English lines. Director Michael Powell said about him, “Only in English did he lose his magnificent authority, walking like a tongue-tied Samson among the Philistines”.
Absolute hero.
Ziemlich viele Dirigenten waren, sind oder wären nicht in der Lage ein Interview in Deutsch durchzustehen. Seiji kann es nicht und Bernstein, obwohl er Deutsch gut lesen konnte und es verstand, in einem Gespräch war er einfach groten schlecht. Fälle, Artikeln, Wortordnung, alles durcheinander. Er tat einfach so als wenn sein Deutsch gut wäre. Mehta kann es sehr gut.
It’s a difficult language to learn; I tried and can read it better than speak or write. That’s not saying much, by the way!!
You mean “grottenschlecht”.
This looks more promising than Bayreuth, really.
Wish I could pay for the trip plus tickets.
Thank goodness for a Jonas Kaufmann interview – perfect material to manipulate into a cod ‘news’ headline in order to attract a few clicks. Would love to see the data. My hypothesis is that posts about JK get more attention than the rest of the site put together.
Tannhauser as a favourite Court singer leaves, it ending up living with a vampire like woman in the Venusberg a sort of imaginary knocking shop. He then gets bored with her and leaves upsetting her he then, meets some of his old pals during a hunting expedition, before witnessing pilgrims off to Rome, he is persuaded to return to the court for a song contest, which he manages to disrupt and gets banished, he follows the pilgrim trail to Rome to try to get absolution from the Pope who refuses he, returning in rags unsuccessfully, he nearly gets dragged back into the gutter again, but is saved by Elisabeth’s saintly death.
Tannhauser does not fit into either world, the court or the Venusberg, the popular lewd songs he learns there are not accepted at Court and the classical courtly minstrel stuff is hated in the Venusberg. It is about Classical vs Pop folks.
I doubt that this Salzburg Tannhauser would be any better than the Gotz Friedrich Bayreuth 1978 one with Gwyneth Jones, best one so far on DVD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf8-S_1rNFI
Does Mr Kaufmann, or Mr Lebrecht, often provide interviews in Latvian? Nelsons manages to work perfectly well with the Gewandhaus. Didn’t Rattle also work with the Berlin Philharmonic in English?
This looks absolutely thrilling and I wish I could be there!! Jonas, will you marry me??!! 🙂
I’m curious about the typography of this trailer… the last names are underlined as if we needed them pointed out that way.