Number one with a bullet

Superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann has been AWOL from the US since September 2014, and it looks like it may be at least another season before he returns. So to fill the JK-void “Trove Thursday” presents his only performance (thus far) of Max in Weber’s Der Freischütz from the 2004 Edinburgh Festival, conducted by Charles Mackerras.

Before Kaufmann became internationally famous, he often appeared at Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival where he sang several roles for the first time. Next month he does his first onstage Walther in Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg in a new production in Munich, but he sang the role in an Edinburgh concert performance in 2006. He also did a rare Flamand in Strauss’s Capriccio there opposite Soile Isokoski in 2004.

Appearing as Agathe opposite Kaufmann in this Freischütz is the lovely and perhaps under-appreciated Swedish soprano Hillevi Martinpelto who is also his partner in another Weber venture—the marvelous 2005 recording of Oberon in English conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. They appear as Huon and Rezia and that CD was the first opportunity I (and probably many others) had to hear Kaufmann.

Weber: Der Freischütz
Edinburgh Festival
17 August 2004

Agathe: Hillevi Martinpelto
Aennchen: Ailish Tynan
Max: Jonas Kaufmann
Kaspar: John Relyea
Ottokar: Christopher Maltman
Killian: Ronan Collett
Hermit: Matthew Rose
Samiel: Siegfried Vogel

Philharmonia Chorus
Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Conductor: Charles Mackerras

As always, Freischütz, last week’s all-star Genoveva, and all previous “Trove Thursday” fare from iTunes or via any RSS reader.