Andrea Chenier at the Sydney Opera House

[sydneyboy]

I write in the afterglow of last night's concert performance at the Sydney Opera House of ''Andrea Chenier.'' A dream cast of Jonas Kaufmann, Eva-Maria Westbroek and Ludovic Tezier delivered the most stupendous singing I have heard in 46 years of opera going. A perfectly balanced cast in the prime of their careers. We can consider ourselves incredibly fortunate to have had 3 visits from Herr Kaufmann in recent years (a recital, a concert performance of Parsifal and now Chenier.) I had the good fortune of hearing him in Otello at Covent Garden 2 years ago which I reported on here. A very pleasant surprise was Ludovic Tezier. I have read reviews of him overseas and he certainly lived up to expectations. Nothing was lost from it being a concert performance and the audience literally roared its approval at the end. Never to be forgotten.

[+ WilliamM]

Thank you for such an interesting post.

 

Much congrats for living in such a wonderful city.

[bostonman]

I love Andrea Chenier. Wonderful score right from that bustling beginning. And I can imagine those 3 stars sounding great in that music.

[sydneyboy]

Jonas Kaufmann has done a number of media interviews while in Sydney and has outlined future plans. He has sung Act 2 of Tristan and he has confirmed that he will sing the whole opera in 2021. Where he did not say but my guess would be his home town of Munich. He has not ruled out eventually singing Siegfried. He is a believer in work life balance and made it clear that he will not be a Domingo singing in his mid 70’s (in Domingo’s case by the way he is going into his 80’s.) He said most people consider retirement in their early 60’s and that made sense to him.

[+ Charlie]

But I have heard Domingo fairly recently, and he can still sing the right roles (and I don't mean the Emperor Altoum).

[sydneyboy]

The reviews for ''Andrea Chenier'' have now appeared and its obvious that I am not the only one who enjoyed the experience. I quote in part from the review in the ''Sydney Morning Herald'':

 

"A tenor of peerless refinement, a soprano of soaring richness and a fierce-edged baritone of complex darkness. Vive la revolution!

Jonas Kaufmann transforms the traditionally stertorous ''spinto'' tenor sound into a thing of wondrous handsomeness, modulating tone, vowel and colour with immaculate poise and musical intelligence.

It is a work that lives or dies on its golden voices and, on this occasion, soared triumphantly.''