Jonas Kaufmann
Since his debut at the Metropolitan Opera New York in 2006, Jonas Kaufmann has been one of the top stars of classical music. After engagements in Saarbrücken, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Milan, Jonas Kaufmann joined the Zurich Opera in 2001. From there, his international career began with appearances at the Lyric Opera Chicago, the Paris Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, La Scala in Milan, the Deutsche Oper and the Staatsoper in Berlin, the Vienna State Opera and at the festivals in Salzburg and Bayreuth.
Kaufmann is just as much in demand internationally in the Italian and French repertoire as he is in the German. He has sung Verdi's Otello in London, Munich and Naples, Massenet's Werther in Paris, Vienna and New York, Wagner's Lohengrin in Bayreuth, at La Scala, in Paris and Melbourne. Whether oratorios and operettas, Canzone Napoletana and Viennese songs - he masters the entire gamut of the tenor repertoire and attaches great importance to a versatile repertoire that keeps him flexible in every respect: vocally, musically, stylistically and linguistically.
Kaufmann describes lieder singing as the "royal class of singing", as this genre requires considerably more fine-tuning and differentiation than any other vocal discipline. His partnership with the pianist Helmut Deutsch, with whom he has worked since his studies in Munich, has proven itself in the recording studio as well as in countless concerts, including on October 30, 2011 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It was the first solo recital given at the Met since Luciano Pavarotti (1994).
Kaufmann has also been the artistic director of the Tiroler Festspiele Erl since 2024. After a first season in Erl, the year 2025 began for the singer with a revival of Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci at the Vienna State Opera, followed by a tour of Asia with opera concerts and recitals, a recital tour with Diana Damrau and Helmut Deutsch (songs by Mahler and Strauss), the title role in Parsifal at the Erl Festival and a new production of I Pagliacci at the Bavarian State Opera.
In the 2025/2026 season, Kaufmann will be presenting performances of Tosca in Zurich and Paris. At the turn of the year, he makes his stage debut as Eisenstein in the Bat At the Vienna State Opera, in April and May he will go on tour with his colleague Malin Byström and conductor Jochen Rieder, with concerts in Hamburg, Hanover, Essen, Munich, Nuremberg, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Lucerne, Vienna and Paris. In June, he will appear as Calaf in Turandot at the Bavarian State Opera. His latest album was released by Sony Classical at the beginning of the season: Doppelganger contains a CD with recordings of Schumann's Poet's love and the Kerner songs with Helmut Deutsch and a DVD with the video recording of Schubert's Swan songstaged by Claus Guth at the Park Avenue Armory in New York.
Jonas Kaufmann is an exclusive artist with Sony Music. Many of his CDs and DVDs have been awarded international prizes such as the Gramophone Award has been honored. He has been voted "Singer of the Year" several times, including by the editors of the trade magazine Opera worldthe classical music magazine Diapason and Musical America as well as by the juries of the International Opera Awardds and the Opus Classic (formerly Echo Klassik). In 2013 he was appointed Bavarian Kammersänger, in 2014 he received the Bambi in the classical music category, in 2015 the Premio Puccini, 2016 the Federal Cross of Merit, 2018 the Officier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art. In 2022 he was appointed Austrian Kammersänger, in 2024 he was awarded the Ordre de la Légion d'honneur excellent.
Source: www.jonaskaufmann.com, September 2025
