Friends of opera! We have three exciting arrivals next week…

October 7th will be a day for Kaufmanniacs.

First of all, we have Jonas’ new CD coming out! Dolce Vita (available for pre-order now) is a 67-minute tribute to Italian music, including the 1911 Neapolitan beauty, “Core ‘ngrato” (“Ungrateful heart”) by Salvatore Cardillo. (Of course, most Kaufmanniacs have watched—and rewatched—him sing this piece on YouTube. A friend of mine expressed her ultimate dream: of Jonas singing this to her in person! Right there with you…

Sigh.

As if that weren’t enough, we also have the DVD (or BluRay) of the 2015 Royal Opera House production of Giordano’s Andrea Chénier starring our tenor in the title role coming out the same day. Featuring Eva-Maria Westbroek and the wonderful Serbian baritone Željko Lučić and conducted by Antonio Pappano, Chénier is one not to be missed, and one of the first recorded operas I saw with our tenor after first encountering him. (And no, surely that’s not a poster of Jonas as Chénier hanging on my bedroom wall…? Oops, guilty.) The opera was free on YouTube, sans subtitles, when I saw it, but it required having a libretto handy, and hence missing too many Jonas moments! I think I need to remedy this. And yes, the DVD or BluRay is also available for pre-order on Amazon.

Of course, Giordano, and Jonas, had me blubbering like a baby by the end, in true Romantic Revolutionary style. (Now, imagine if it had been an opera of A Tale of Two Cities with our tenor as a certain tragic hero who shall not be named…I might not be alive today to tell the tale. It would simply be too much.)

Then, Saturday October 8th is the start of our new season of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD cinema showings, beginning with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, conducted by Simon Rattle and starring Nina Stemme as Isolde, Stuart Skelton as Tristan, and the always glorious René Pape as King Marke. I am still new to Wagner, so this should be an interesting experience. A long Wagner on a Saturday morning sounds a bit intense, I admit…

Enjoy!