Message from Teatro San Carlo in Naples:
We regret to inform our spectators that, due to a sudden illness of Jonas Kaufmann, the concert scheduled for Friday, 2024 February 2 has been postponed to Saturday March 2 at 20h with the same program.
The menu is entirely film music,
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They’ll come up with another sob story come March 2.
This so-called tenor who was the 1950s and ’60s and ’70s wouldn’t even be on the Met stage cancels more performance shoes that he performs what a joke!!!!
Does Herr Kaufman actually cancel more frequently than other singers at his level, or do his cancellations simply attract more attention?
Abit of both I’d say
He seems to have some ongoing viral throat condition so he said in a recent interview
He certainly has had his fair share of cancelations at the ROH such as Cav and Pag and the recent Werther except for the first night
Hes scheduled to sing A Chenier in June but I’m not holding my breath
For all his current unpopularity
Domingo rarely cancelled unless it was genuine illness or family issues
It seems today’s singers can cancel or reschedule at a whim
It dos them no favors as people just don’t book
Kaufmanns Werther wasn’t sold out even after a few days of tickets being on sale there were plenty at all prices
“It seems today’s singers can cancel or reschedule at a whim.”
This is all too true. Look at Kaufmann. Harteros is another. A generation prior, anyone who cancelled for the slightest of reasons would be subjected to an online mob or, before the internet, to a mob of wagging tongues. The laissez-faire/carte-blanche attitude today reflects the overall sense of despair and panic in the business as a result of the disappearance of vocal stars and of dwindling audiences.
You don’t seem to be very well informed about Kaufmann’s matters. You are drawing cancellations from 2 years ago, why not from 20? And it really doesn’t make sense to compare the health of different people – it’s an innate characteristic of the body and the different conditions they live in. Besides, Domingo lived in different media times – the sensation-oriented media did not follow him as persistently as Norman Lebrecht and others follow Kaufmann today. He could sing in worse form and cancel – and the internet didn’t scream about it. The cancellations of many other contemporary singers are not written about – they do not attract the attention of commentators like those of Kaufmann. The air in London at this time of year (June) does not seem to serve – because it is allergenic – many artists. Listen on Yt to how well Kaufmann sang just a few days after those cancelled London Werthers.
Yes, he cancelled for months in the past (even for 4-6 months periods), but somehow everybody is closing their eyes when he cancels and he still gets the jobs, even if his vocal state is now really poor
Please please please please please bring back Mario Del Monaco greatest dramatic tenor of them all!!;;;
“vocal state is now really poor”? Schwanengesang in New York, Otello and Calaf in Vienna were great!
Poor? On what basis do you make such a claim? What have you listened to him in recently? (He has never had a break longer than three months. And it was only twice – in 2011 and 2016).
I have heard him many times at Covent Garden and at the Wigmore Hall and out of all the performances he only cancelled once.
He shows up to collect awards, but cancels singing engagements. He’s now the world’s most unreliable singer.
You don’t even know how unfair you are to him!
He might have some transitory qualms ’bout the brilliance of his latest record, who knows.
It’s basically over, isn’t it?
Didn’t you hear his Siegfried a few weeks ago? He was very good.
PS: I say that with only sadness. He’s in his mid-fifties, has perpetual vocal problems…where could it possibly go from here?
Does he ever appear anymore? ANYWHERE?
JK would have less mystique if he performed more.
If Jonas doesn’t sing, Alan doesn’t get paid.
All these “wonderful” comments above are the fruit of Norman Lebrecht’s strenuous work – the work of constantly depreciating this artist. There is never any information here about what he has sung, there is only mention of cancellations. No one here knows or has heard that Jonas Kaufmann has sung all his many engagements, cancelling nothing, since August. A lot of it has been filmed – you can find out videos from the concerts in Verona and Budapest, pirates captures from Schwannengesang from New York and Gioconda in Sydney, whole performances of Otello and Turandot from Vienna, Valkyrie from Berlin… But who cares about the facts, the users of this blog have their own vision of the world.
I am completely neutral about Kaufmann. Please take your fangirl nonsense and post it somwhere else.
Did you really write that with a straight face? I am amused.
So he is sick and rescheduled… and is Vienna Calaf just before Christmas was pretty good actually…
I have no inclination to ‘stick up’ for JK, I really have no idea whether he cancels more frequently than singers in similar circumstances. But I will say that I have followed opera and singers for more than 40 years. It’s just a different world today. Singers sing much too often, in too many places, and in too much and excessively varied repertoire. Companies and orchestras cannot, or think they cannot, balance the books without certain names, and a great many singers are undisciplined. I’m not a person who decries change solely on principle. But this is not a good thing for those who enjoyed a stable and somewhat predictable musical output. I’m not sanguine about the future of the art.
I say this as a parent and grandparent; having a child under 5 years of age usually means the family experiences all sorts of illnesses, and regularly. Same for the grandparents who sometimes care for them.
By trying to sound like a dramatic tenor when he is not he has created all this problems for himself.