Photograph: Rob Davidson
Opening Evening at Carnegie Corridor recurrently encompasses a tip-top visiting orchestra led by its renown music director and that includes a star soloist. The 2026-27 season-opener started a four-concert residency by the Berliner Philharmoniker carried out by Kirill Petrenko, who provided a comparatively transient program (75 minutes, introduced with out intermission) of Italian music.
Of particular curiosity was the reappearance of Jonas Kaufmann, absent from Carnegie Corridor for 5 years and three from New York Metropolis, the place final he appeared on the Park Avenue Armory in Doppelgänger. Anybody hankering to listen to the tenor once more on the Metropolitan Opera (the place he final appeared in October 2018 as Dick Johnson in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West) was disillusioned to study in late 2025 that he would not be returning to his U.S. opera residence. Kaufmann declared that his purpose was the corporate’s objectionable technique of invoking pressure majeure in the course of the pandemic closure to keep away from paying its soloists, refrain, and orchestra. On the identical time, the world’s main tenor additionally renounced the Royal Opera as a result of he has discovered non permanent housing in London prohibitively costly.
Judging from the well mannered applause he obtained all through the live performance, Carnegie’s very dressy opening night time viewers was solely staidly happy to welcome Kaufmann again. Freshly shaved and as soon as once more all-brunette, the 57-year-old tenor started his reshuffled program with the “Prologue” (“Si puó? Si puó?”) from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, a baritone aria. Its inclusion introduced again recollections of the arguments that swirled across the singer when he made his Met debut twenty years in the past. Many listeners complained that his exceptionally darkish, ardent tenor was misidentified: He was actually a baritone!
I by no means understood this declare, and at Carnegie Corridor, Kaufmann sounded very very similar to a tenor on an ill-judged detour. Not having sung domestically with an orchestra in eight years, his voice sounded considerably contracted, and his lowest notes had been noticeably weak. His youthful colleague, “baritenor” Michael Spyres, was altogether extra profitable when he recorded Tonio’s aria a number of years in the past. After the orchestra performed Pagliacci’s Intermezzo, Kaufmann returned to extra snug territory with Canio’s despairing “Vesti la giubba,” which featured the standard bitter snigger (albeit a modest one) however no sobs.
Following the primary of the orchestra’s pair of Respighi Roman showpieces, Kaufmann returned for a distractingly mannered “Lamento di Federico” from Cilea’s L’Arlesiana. He and Petrenko took this marvelously melancholic aria fairly slowly, and Kaufmann greater than as soon as indulged in his acquainted behavior of exaggerating pianissimo phrases whereas constructing to a melodramatically fortissimo ending marred by a short hiccup as he attacked the ultimate excessive word. The Pagliacci arias had been initially scheduled to finish his participation within the live performance, however the order was modified after this system was printed. He concluded as a substitute with Loris’s very briefly hovering “Amor ti vieta” from Fedora. After the hearty applause that greeted the Cilea, the Giordano’s ovation was rather more muted. After he gathered up two bouquets, Kaufmann, with Petrenko, left the stage; The applause died out earlier than they even reached the exit. If an encore was even deliberate, the crowded undoubtedly didn’t demand it. I think about that even probably the most enthusiastic Kaufmann fan was disillusioned by simply 4 brief verismo arias ably, if not exceptionally, carried out.
Within the years since Kaufmann final appeared on the Met, it may need appeared that he was reducing again on opera. He continues to tour broadly: some lieder recitals, however extra typically concert events with soprano and orchestra, generally tied to a lately launched recording. This season’s tour might be “Tutto Verdi,” first with Marina Rebeka after which Juliana Grigoryan. However in any other case his schedule this season reveals a shocking elevated emphasis on opera. Subsequent month, Kaufmann returns to Otello on the Wiener Staatsoper, after which he’s again at Carnegie Corridor to affix Gustavo Dudamel and the New York Philharmonic for a pair of Tosca’s with Rebeka and Ludovic Tézier. Subsequent yr finds the tenor tackling Dick Johnson in Zurich, Parsifal at his Tiroler Competition in Erl, and Tannhäuser in Munich, the final of which he’s solely beforehand carried out on the 2023 Salzburg Easter Competition.
Photograph: Rob Davidson
The gala viewers at Carnegie Corridor was rather more appreciative of Petrenko and his deluxe Berliners. After a luxurious however oddly fragmented overture to Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, they targeting two of Respighi’s three dazzling Roman tone poems. Though I most popular the Fontane di Roma, it was not possible to withstand the majestic bravura that the conductor and his orchestra dropped at Pini di Roma, particularly its thrilling conclusion for which Petrenko positioned a pair of brass sections in Carnegie’s balconies. After the fantastic rising solar on the Appian Means, the viewers instantly rose to its ft for an extended and loud ovation that far eclipsed something that the night’s star tenor obtained. Then the orchestra did provide an encore: a bracing “People Competition” from Shostakovich’s The Gadfly Suite, Op. 97a, No. 3.
In December, Petrenko will take the tour to Frankfurt and Baden-Baden once more with this all-Italian program, including Feste Romane to reunite the Respighi trilogy. His tenor will as a substitute be American Jonathan Tetelman who’s scheduled for 3 of the 4 arias Kaufmann carried out. Dropping the Pagliacci Prologue, he’ll fold in Turiddu’s “Mamma, quel vino è generoso.”
Sadly, their program received’t be carried out on the Berlin Philharmonie from which most of the orchestra’s concert events are streamed on its distinctive on-line residence, Digital Live performance Corridor. This previous season I loved its dwell streams of Petrenko conducting lavish variations of Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand and Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Of its future streams, parterre field readers will certain be most involved in April 3, 2027, when Die Walküre might be carried out in live performance after stage performances in Salzburg that characteristic Lise Davidsen’s first Brünnhildes.
Christopher Corwin
Christopher Corwin started writing for parterre field in 2011 underneath the pen title “DeCaffarrelli.” His work has additionally appeared in , The New York Occasions, Musical America, The Observer, San Francisco Classical Voice and BAMNotes. Like many, he got here to opera through the Saturday Met Opera broadcasts which he started listening to at age 11. His specific enthusiasm is seventeenth and 18th century opera. Since 2015 he has curated the weekly podcast Trove Thursday on parterre field presenting dwell recordings.
