Intermezzo

The Four Tenors

Ramón Vargas must have a pretty impressive address book.  After Stephen Costello and Ferruccio Furlanetto pulled out of a charity concert he'd arranged, Vargas wasted no time in grabbing  a couple of top-tier subs.

Jonas Kaufmann and Juan Diego Florez were the surprise guests yesterday morning at the Vienna State Opera event, joining Vargas and fellow tenor Michael Schade in raising €140,000 to help disabled Mexican children. 

It was Verdi nearly all the way - Vargas sang an aria from Luisa Miller, Kaufmann picked La forza del destino and Juan Diego Flórez  La donna è mobile, while Michael Schade went for local boy Mozart and the portrait aria from Zauberflöte.  The original multi-tenor member Plácido Domingo got in on the act too, with a special video message.

Jonas Kaufmann's replacement announced

The Royal Albert Hall have just announced that the excellent Ramón Vargas will replace Jonas Kaufmann for the 6 June concert.

Don Carlo in Munich

Don Carlo - National Theatre Munich, 22 July 2010

A sound production, a spectacular cast, a few roast heretics for supper - this could have been the greatest Don Carlo ever. If only they'd rehearsed it. Following an airing in January, Jürgen Rose's ten year old production was revived for just two nights. Some critics complain that Munich's summer opera festival is not imaginative enough, that it doesn't have new productions coming out of its ears like Salzburg's does. But for out-of-towners like me, one of the main attractions is well-cast revivals of old favourites.

However when the most convincing actor on stage is Ramón Vargas, you know you've got problems. The singing was uniformly terrific, but the cast, to a (wo)man, looked as if they'd been shoved on stage and told to get on with it. It didn't help that the temperature outdoors was a muggy 80-plus degrees, and worse inside. In their heavy period costumes, sweat running down their faces, running around the stage was probably the last thing any of them wanted to do.