Manon lescaut puccini jonas kaufmann biography

At the age of 44, the great German tenor, today considered the greatest of his generation, has chosen to add a new role to his repertoire, that of Des Grieux in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut.

Manon lescaut puccini jonas kaufmann biography

After Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca and Dick Jonhson in La Fanciulla del West, this is only his third Puccini role, even though his baritone-tinged tenor voice seems ideally made for this repertoire. Why did he wait so long? Perhaps just because he was never offered it.

Or because he felt that, before tackling the density and fiery tensions required by the Puccinian orchestra, he needed to put his projection as a lyric tenor to the test with the works of Verdi and Wagner.

And so it was only after taking on Monteverdi (Nero in L’Incoronazione di Poppea) and Mozart (Titus in La Celemnza di Tito, Belmonte in The Abduction from the Seraglio, Tamino in The Magic Flute and the title role in Idomenea) that Jonas Kaufmann cautiously approac