Decca Releases Tenor Jonas Kaufmann’s Latest Album, Verismo, Available April 19

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Kaufmann presents two recitals and then takes a starring role in Die Walküre at the Metropolitan Opera this spring

German tenor Jonas Kaufmann returns to the US this spring with a newly recorded album on Decca and in a role debut at the Metropolitan Opera. For his third opera aria recital on Decca, Kaufmann returns to the Italian roles that have excited audiences around the world and garnered widespread praise. This recording comes to the US as Kaufmann arrives for two recitals in Los Angeles and Berkeley and then the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Die Walküre.

On April 14, 2010, Jonas Kaufmann became the first German tenor to sing Cavaradossi at the Metropolitan Opera in one hundred and three years. He shaped Puccini’s music with exceptional elegance, balancing the character’s essential revolutionary fervor with a heart-stopping tenderness. Critics and audiences ecstatically responded to his portrayal: “Mr. Kaufmann received frenzied bravos from the audience. His russet-colored voice has body and charisma. You could sense amazement throughout the house at his thrilling top notes during Cavaradossi’s defiant cries of “Vittoria!” Yet his plaintive pianissimo phrases were equally impressive. That the youthful, curly-haired Mr. Kaufmann is also heartthrob-handsome did not hurt.” (New York Times)

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