Jonas Kaufmann

Jonas Kaufmann, born in Munich in 1969, has been for more than two decades one of the most celebrated tenors in the world. He studied at the Munich University of Music and Performing Arts and began his career in the ensemble of the Saarbrücken State Theatre in the mid-1990s, before a long period as a company member at the Zurich Opera. His international breakthrough came in 2006 with his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Alfredo in La traviata; since then he has appeared at all the major opera houses, among them Covent Garden, La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opéra and the Bavarian State Opera in his native Munich, in a repertoire that stretches from Wagner (Lohengrin, Parsifal, Tristan) to French and Italian opera (Don José, Werther, Cavaradossi, Otello). His dark, baritonal timbre and his acting intensity have made him particularly associated with the dramatic roles of Italian verismo, including Canio in Pagliacci, which he sang together with Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana in a double bill at the Salzburg Easter Festival in 2015.