I wrote this for a newsgroup the morning after the Wednesday night, so it's not really in blogpost style, but why rewrite what captures the essence of the evening
He came over really well. Relaxed and articulate. A poised confidence that wasn't dependent upon some act of 'look at me look at me'. Thoughtful without being too self-analytical.
There was a lot of talk about roles and his versatility. He said that it's quite difficult to balance the development of roles with the need to commit 4 or 5 years in advance - there might be a new role that he's got booked for several different runs over the next two years, and he finds out that he's bored of it, but he's still committed to singing it in 5 years time. OTOH, there are roles - such as Otello - that he would love to do, but only when he's ready, and he has to decide whether to take the chance of being ready in 5 years. He could book one run, and find that it really works, and have no others booked for years, or he could take the chance that it will be right, find it's wrong for his voice and be committed to further appearances.
Edward Seckerson asked him whether he would sing Peter Grimes. His enthusiastic 'why not' was greeted approvingly by the capacity audience. He'd seen the recent 'Met' production and really liked it.
He talked about different roles, how Don Jose is good to play because of the way he is quite a complex character and changes through the opera, whereas Florestan has that wonderful aria which is a mini-opera in itself, but he says there is only one way to play Florestan, you can't play him as someone with a complex background.
He also talked about the difficulty of changing between roles. How he went from Don Jose to the Duke of Mantua with just a few days in between and it really hurt to make that change.
He was asked what hobbies he has. He said,being with his children. He absolutely doesn't like golf. His major thing is 'working', fixing things. When he rents an apartment, say in London, the first thing he does is go round fixing all the things that don't work properly - the heating, windows that don't close properly and so on. When he first came to Covent Garden someone showed him a tool shop on St Martin's Lane which he absolutely loves. Edward Seckerson remarked - there are some jobs that need doing round the opera house and then later said 'Can I have your number?'
I found myself sitting in an excellent position, pretty central. On the back row, which meant that I was elevated above the hoi polloi.
The talk was interspersed with the playing of recorded excerpts of various things. During Ah, fuyez douce image, our eyes met and locked. I think we both got into this situation where neither of us was able/prepared to break the lock. And from time to time, his eyes returned to mine. at times I felt he had picked me out as the person in the audience to direct attention at. If I was the person I was maybe ten years ago I would be going on an on about eyes meeting across a crowded room blah de blah, significance, destiny etc. But being that I'm now well grown up, I regard it merely as a fun inconsequential encounter between a man and a woman.
He did a signing after, but the person chairing the meeting said that Jonas's time was very limited. Plus, I have the residual of cough, cold etc, so I decided to avoid meeting him one on one.
He was dressed in a tailored jacket, open neck striped shirt (red and black candy stripes on white), jeans that didn't look cheap and had that deliberate washed-out look (but they didn't look hideously overpriced fashion victim). Also scruffy black trainers.
A member of the global conglomerate that is Parsifal79 reported it thus:
Jonas Kaufmann and about 100 of his fans, met yesterday in some studio of the Royal Opera House, where Jonas gave an interview and the fans ripped off his clothes, took pieces of his curly hair and were surrendered to massive hysteria.with pics
