Puccini: Love Affairs Standard CD

Release September 13, 2024

Standard CD Edition

(Berlin, July 19) Following the phenomenal success of his first Puccini album, the 2015 Grammy-nominated "Nessun Dorma," Jonas Kaufmann now presents a new album of Puccini highlights to mark the composer's 2024 anniversary. For the new recording, he has selected six great duets and scenes with six outstanding sopranos: legendary love scenes, emotionally charged Love Affairs.
"What really appealed to me was to record these very different duets with different partners," says Kaufmann. "With almost all of them, I have experienced unforgettable moments on stage."
Manon Lescaut is sung by Anna Netrebko, with whom he has performed many times throughout his career. This year, audiences have heard them together in two productions of Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. Tosca is sung by Sonya Yoncheva, who recently partnered with him at the Arena di Verona. The role of Butterfly is sung by Maria Agresta, who will be touring with Kaufmann next October to mark Puccini's centenary and will perform some of the repertoire from this album. Following their amazing success in the new Viennese production of Turandot in December 2023, Asmik Grigorian and Jonas Kaufmann now embody the tragic lovers in Il Tabarro. And as in the opera performances at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, Malin Byström is once again his partner here in La Fanciulla del West. The album also features a debut, that of Jonas Kaufmann and Pretty Yende, who are heard together for the first time in the famous love duet from La Bohème.
Asher Fisch, the album's conductor, is a regular collaborator of Kaufmann's: "We have known each other for many years. This is also our second album, after Dolce Vita, which we recorded in Palermo in 2016. This time we went to Bologna, and to the brilliant orchestra of the Teatro Comunale, with whom I gave a concert a few years ago."
The new album also includes two of Puccini's tenor hits that did not appear on the first album from 2015: "Che gelida manina" from La Bohème and "E lucevan le stelle" from Tosca.
For Jonas Kaufmann, Puccini's music is and remains a unique phenomenon: "The buttons he presses with his music still work, a hundred years after his death, and they do so in a modern society completely jaded by an endless barrage of bad news and experiences. Much has been written about Puccini, but, in my opinion, no one has been able to explain how he managed to evoke such incredibly powerful emotions with hardly any notes. That is a mystery that probably no AI in the world can comprehend."