Thomas Voigt

'The most sought-after tenor in the world', the greatest tenor of today', 'the new king of tenors' - for years Jonas Kaufmann has occupied a unique status among the world's greatest opera singers.

Thomas Voigt's revealing biography, written in collaboration with Kaufmann, reflects on the singer's artistic development in recent years; his work in the recording studio; his relationship to Verdi and Wagner; and much more. The book includes contributions from Plácido Domingo, Anja Harteros, Antonio Pappano, Helmut Deutsch and Jürgen Kesting, as well as many striking photographs.

Kaufmann was born in Munich in 1969. Soon after training at the University of Music and Performing Arts he was invited to make his debut in theatres such as the Stuttgart Opera and Hamburg State Opera, as well as international appearances at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Paris Opera and La Scala in Milan. He made his Salzburg Festival debut in 1999 in a new production of Busoni's Doktor Faust. He performed the role of Don José in Bizet's Carmen at Covent Garden in 2006 and made his acclaimed debut as Alfredo in Verdi's La Traviata at the Metropolitan Opera alongside Angela Gheorghiu. He has sung leading tenor roles in the operas of Richard Wagner with success in Germany and abroad, and is also a highly accomplished Lieder singer. In 2015 Kaufmann became the first German to perform the British seafaring anthem 'Rule, Britannia!' at the Last Night of the Proms.

No wonder that the New York Times has described Jonas Kaufmann as 'a box-office draw, and ... the most important versatile tenor of his generation'.