48 hours in Greece (Jonas Kaufmann at the Megaron part II)

When i first heard that Jonas would be singing in Athens at the Megaron i immediately throught :Have to be there!!! And then the excitment got crushed by work, which i couldn't get away from, by the budget which wouldn't be streched and at some point in December last year it seemed more like an impossible dream...



And then somebody stepped in and made it all possible! Sombody found me the cheapest flights possible and I could even go on the day and come back the next; somebody found me an incredibly cheap but very nice hotel 5 min walking distance from the venue; somebody even checked that i didn't have to walk far to the underground so i didn't have to spend any money on taxis; somebody took care of the tickets; somebody even worried the day before i travelled whether i would have to deal with an underground strike and what to do!!! I travel a lot and i always have to be a one man/girl show from planning to execution. So i can't even begin to tell you how spiled and pampered i felt!!!! So things became not only easy, but entirely possible!Lucky me i even managed to juggle some work and get the days off!



So thanks to this special someone, their patience and care, i was on my way to hear Jonas in Greece, a place which I realy love! And things only got better from there, I have a slight suspicion that this person even did some magic and convinced the sun to shine!! ;-))))Because it hadn't stopped puring down the days before and I was greated by clear blue skies and 15C!! On the 15th of January!!!. As a result we have been trodding uphill to see the Acropolis wearing short sleeves and all the time having a totally surreal feeling. As you can imagine, there are not many tourist around this time of the year and I have never seen the Acropolis so peaceful. It has already shut yesterday when we got there, but we persevered and having the same gentle sunshine to warm us had our walk around the old rocks while looking down on an Athens in sparkling white. I don't think the city is more beautiful than seen from up there.



The same special someone put the icing on the cake of the day by introducing me to some very nice friends, who had in turn treated us to some very very good seats and after the concert we shared a gorgeous meal in a relaxed and quirky place. For all this, for making me feel so welcome and so spoiled i cannot thank you enough!!! You are one of a kind and i hope we can do this again and that i will in turn soon be able to return the friendship :-) ( then again, maybe I am just getting sentimental because of the musical overdose and one addictive and delicious saganaki ;-))))

Ok, now that you all are properly envious of me feeling like a princess, here is the bit you really care about: the concert!

You will see the banner says: Megaron Mousikis Athenon (the venue): Megales lirikes phones - Great lyrical voices - unless my guessed transaltion is totally wrong ;-). And looking down, yes there we go our RA photo and our tenor with his name spelled correctly and if you have gooes eyes you can even make out the name of tonight's young and enthusiastic conductor: Michael Güttler.

The concert went very well indeed!!! The Hall was packed, the orchestra isn't the best but played decently and Jonas was really very good. He still had some slight signs of the bug that were a tiny tiny bit audible in recondita, che gelida and Martha. But when he came back for Werther he was incredible! I have never heard the aria sung like this, he told the story like it was happening there and then and every phrase had meaning. The audience followed him breathless and speechless and exploded in the end. Jonas had arrived!!!

Part two went even better, he basically picked up from the Werther and took it beyond that. He sung e lucevan like i heard and saw him sing it in ROH, with that incredible intensity, melancholy and passion that leaves the audience suspended in time. Some got overexited and tried to kill the last notes with applause , but were vehemently shushed and the Hall exploded in the end. La fleur was incredibly tender and the final heart-wrenching and incredibly intense. He did that amazing crescendo in piano to the end faultlessly and once again the audience went crazy. And what to say about die Gralserzahlung???? (In fernem Land) I think he noticed as well how he captured everyones attention. I was so waiting for this and it was pure magic!!! He doesn't just sing about Lohengrin, he is the Gralstritter himself!!! That softness....unreal... it seems to be the voice from another world and his words and notes fell softly and which such power into the silence. He build it up amazingly and endedwith the most incredible heldentenor revelation of Lohengrin's name. I can't wait for Munich!!!! I so pray i will get the tickets i have requested!!! I don't know how Wagner wanted his Lohengrin to sound like, but i don't think there can be anyone who has this capacity to capture the magic and mystical aura of the story like Jonas.

Above all his piano was artful today, lyrical and tender and sweet and very clean, i have a feeling it gets only more and more beautiful and he adds more and more shades to it. And i think the public in general are finally really "getting" it! At least the public in Athens listened to him in rapture!

Given that it was all going so well and the applause was insitent, Jonas decided he had more to give and we had not 1, not 2..but 4 encores!!! Yes, he did them all! The Lamento gets more and more touching every time i hear it, the Non ti scordar di me was a perfect warm plea (and i am not sure about the music, but he found a darker, deeper and warmer tone to it, which made the final note more parte of the whole instead of a final goal; i liked what he did to it, it sounded very good). And then... daring as he is, he went for La donna e mobile!!! Crazy, isn't it, to sing this at the end of such an evening!! And what a performance it was!! I can't even begin to tell you how much i regret never having heard his Duca live. But now that i got this treat i can only regret it even more!!! I don't think he will sing the role on stage again, there is so much else in the future... But i am incredibly grateful i got to hear and see this. This was definitely an aria on my black list of arias trampled upon by tenors worldwide, oversung and just dragged into the banal. It wasn't until I heard Jonas interpretation of it last year in concert that i really wanted to listen to this aria again. He makes it about so much more than the top note at the end, so playful and tender in parts, like a bold an enchanting caress. And he played it very well indeed, I had never seen Jonas' Duca before and he makes a very convincing and charmingly funny character.

After much applause he even gave Dein ist mein ganzes Herz, again given the moment in the concert, sung on the warm side rather than on the brash, but very adequate to the connection he made with the public. All of this with much Bravoing, stamping and clapping in between. Athens looooved Jonas and so the many members of the "adoring ;-)" public told him, when they came looking for his autograph and he looked happy himself. Indeed he should, this was some performance tonight!!! It was much much much more than even I expected of this evening. His is by no means another concert of arias and he puts an incredible amount of himself into it. This public certainly was thankful for it! There were people who came from other towns in Greece just to hear him and there was particularly one older gentlemen who wanted to come and thank him personally while he was bowing for the last time and, although i didn't hear what he said, judging from his age and gestures I am sure he meant to say he hasn't heard anything as beautiful in a long long time, if ever :-)

I also like Michael Güttler :-) His enthusiasm is catching and Jonas and him seem to be working well together.

More details and some cute and some very nice pictures from Parsi :-) I know, i should have told you from the beginning he's got all the details, but then, would any of you have gotten down to read all of this??? Hmm??? Hmmmm??? ;-)))

Sooo...

Left London 3am Thursday morning, Jan 15th...back home almost 3am Saturday morning.. 48 hours in Greece!!! And i wish i could go back and do it all again!

By the way the program of the concert was:
Jonas Kaufmann, Megaron Athens, 15 January 2009
The Athens State Orchestra conductor Michael Güttler
Gioacchino Rossini GUGLIELMO TELL
Ouvertüre Orchester
JK - Giacomo Puccini TOSCA „Recondita Armonia”
JK - Giacomo Puccini LA BOHEME „Che gelida manina“
Carl Maria von Weber OBERON
Ouvertüre Orchester
JK - Friedrich von Flotow MARTHA „Ach so fromm“
Pietro Mascagni CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA
Intermezzo Orchester
JK - Jules Massenet WERTHER „Pourquoi me réveiller“
- Interval–
Giuseppe Verdi LA FORZA DEL DESTINO
Ouvertüre Orchester
JK - Giacomo Puccini TOSCA „E lucevan le stelle“
Georges Bizet CARMEN Auszüge aus den Suiten Nr. 1 und 2
Orchester
JK - Georges Bizet CARMEN „La fleur que tu m’avais jetée“
Richard Wagner LOHENGRIN
Vorspiel zum 3. Akt Orchester
JK - Richard Wagner LOHENGRIN „Im fernen Land“

Encores:
L’Arlesiana Il Lamento di Federico
Non ti scordar di me
La donna e mobile
Dein ist mein ganzes Herz