While Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann are preparing for the next production of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda (at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples), ORF will broadcast the radio recording from the Salzburg Easter Festival production on Saturday, 6 April at 7:30pm. Antonio Pappano conducts the choir and orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Photo: Osterfestspiele Salzburg / Bernd Uhlig
Interview The iPaper
Who could resist hearing one of the world’s most beautiful voices up close, singing alone with a piano? Song recitals, especially of Lieder (song in German), used to be standard fare in concert-goers’ diaries. Yet now, beyond specialist series and festivals, such events are becoming oddly rare. In a world dominated by pop songs – surely not so different, just noisier – exactly why the classical song recital has become an endangered species is a mystery. Jonas Kaufmann, widely regarded as the “world’s greatest tenor”, is determined to solve it.
“Everywhere we have difficulties in selling song recitals, because people are no longer used to this genre,” the German superstar says, on the phone from his summer holiday. “Maybe it’s not an easy-access art form. People are afraid it will be too long or too boring. And that’s sad, because it is unique and so intense that it would be a shame if it were just to vanish from the world’s artistic map.” Read more
