Jonas Kaufmann News

The Metropolitan Opera's annual Summer HD Festival, presenting free outdoor screenings of operas in Lincoln Center Plaza, returns for the 11th time this summer, with one screening each night from Saturday, August 24, to Monday, September 2, 2019 (Labor Day). The series features ten performances from the company's acclaimed Live in HD series of movie theater transmissions, including performances from the 2018 19 season as well as some of the most popular transmissions from past years. Preceding the festival, on Friday, August 23, the classic movie musical Funny Face will be screened in the plaza, in association with Film at Lincoln Center. Funny Face features songs by George and Ira Gershwin, whose opera, Porgy and Bess, will be presented in a new production to open the Met's forthcoming 2019 20 season in September.

The Royal Opera House today launches its 2019/20 Season, unveiling an exciting range of new commissions, world premieres and much-loved revivals, supported by a diverse range of ticketed and free daytime events, activities and festivals for people of all ages.

Sarasota Opera is pleased to announce the lineup for the 2019 season of "HD at the Opera House" and "Classic Movies at the Opera House."  The "HD at the Opera House" series will open on Sunday, May 19th and run through October 6th.

BroadwayWorld presents a comprehensive weekly roundup of regional stories around our Broadway World, which include videos, editor spotlights, regional reviews and more. This week, we feature The Color Purple Casting Controversy, Paper Mill's 2019/2020 Season, and More!

The Royal Ballet's production of Carlos Acosta's charming and fun Don Quixote will screen in US cinemas across March and April 2019. The production is filed from the Royal Opera House in London's Covent Garden.

Not since a memorable La traviata in 2008 have superstars Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann appeared together at the Royal Opera House. Small wonder, then, that their pairing as fate-thwarted lovers Leonora and Don Alvaro in Verdi's sprawling tragedy La Forza del Destino sent the Royal Opera House booking system into meltdown, with tickets soon appearing on external sites for four-figure sums. No sooner had that excitement subsided than the usual rumours started circulating: one or other of the stars would pull out – both have form. And when Kaufmann failed to appear for the dress rehearsal the doom-mongers' chatter gained volume.

Christina Scheppelmann will become Seattle Opera's fourth General Director in the company's 56-year history. Beginning in August 2019, she replaces Aidan Lang, who will become General Director of Welsh National Opera following the end of the 2018/19 season.

Clive Gillinson, Executive and Artistic Director, today announced Carnegie Hall's 2019–2020 season featuring more than 170 concerts by many of the world's most celebrated artists and ensembles in classical, pop, jazz, and world music. The season also includes a wide range of groundbreaking education and social impact programs created by Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute, engaging audiences in New York City, across the country, and around the world.

Clive Gillinson, Executive and Artistic Director, today announced Carnegie Hall's 2019–2020 season featuring more than 170 concerts by many of the world's most celebrated artists and ensembles in classical, pop, jazz, and world music. The season also includes a wide range of groundbreaking education and social impact programs created by Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute, engaging audiences in New York City, across the country, and around the world.

On New Year's Eve, the Metropolitan Opera unveiled a new production of Cilea's ADRIANA LECOUVREUR, with a high-powered, audience-pleasing cast--headed by Anna Netrebko--in a production by Met favorite David McVicar, appealingly designed and costumed, and played elegantly by the Met orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda's sweeping baton.

Well, it's that time of the year again--time for a look-back on what was worth making note of during the calendar year that's about to come to an end. It's from a totally personal, subjective point of view, of course, but frankly that's the way opera-lovers always seem to like it, n'est-ce pas? The productions worth noting come from places big, small and in-between, from composers old as the hills to freshly minted or somewhere in between (likewise the performers), from traditional or boldly modern to simply stand up and sing.

The Royal Opera House presents a host of world premieres and debuts across ballet and opera in 2019, alongside a diverse range of free and ticketed Front of House events for all ages. 2019 also sees the first performances by The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera in the newly refurbished Linbury Theatre, the West End's newest and most intimate theatre.

To commemorate the start of Yannick Nézet-Séguin's new position as the Jeanette Lerman Neubauer Music Director, the Met is releasing an audio compilation of performance highlights on iTunes, as well as a series

I caught up with rising star bass-baritone Christian Van Horn the other day, to find out what the devil was going on with his starring role in the Met's first performance of Arrigo Boito's MEFISTOFELE in almost 20 years. Were you nervous as hell (pun intended) on the first night, I asked Van Horn, winner of this year's prestigious Richard Tucker Award, in your role as the Devil?

To say that this was an unusual week for opera-goers venturing into BAM's Next Wave Festival would be an understatement—but then the unexpected is what makes it is an indispensable component of the New York arts scene, with Philip Glass's SATYAGRAHA and Douglas J. Cuomo's SAVAGE WINTER.

The Royal Opera House will launch its first ever Cinema Festival on Monday 3 December in the newly refurbished Linbury Theatre in the heart of Covent Garden. Children can go free to all Saturday and Sunday cinema matinee performances and to The Nutcracker on 3 December. Launching with the live screening of The Nutcracker on 3 December and running until 6 January 2019, the Cinema Festival will feature 21 titles that celebrate the breadth of ballet and opera repertory shown in cinemas since our first broadcast ten years ago. Tickets on sale Thursday 8 November at 10am.

In the video below watch as Jonas Kaufmann discusses his role with host Susanna Phillips during the October 27 Live in HD transmission.

Lyric Opera of Chicago is pleased to announce the participation of several outstanding singers in the Renee Fleming 25th Anniversary Concert & Gala*, to honor and celebrate American soprano Renee Fleming's extraordinary commitment to Chicago and her unparalleled contributions to our art form.

For his inaugural season as Principal Conductor of Orchestra of St. Luke's, Bernard Labadie has curated a three-concert residency at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage-marking the 32nd year of the OSL series at Carnegie Hall-with a focus on the music and influence of Joseph Haydn. The first concert today, October 25 at 8:00 p.m., which pairs Haydn's "Nelson Mass" with Mozart's Requiem, K. 626 (revised and completed by Robert Levin), marks OSL's first collaboration with La Chapelle de Quebec, the choir founded and directed by Maestro Labadie. Soloists joining the ensembles on stage include soprano Lauren Snouffer, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, tenor Lothar Odinius, and bass-baritone Philippe Sly.

On Saturday, October 27 at 1:00pm the Players present, Live from the Metropolitan Opera, a screening of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West.