Hello Jonas, I am very pleased that you have taken the time for this conversation. My first question concerns your penchant for Austria. Whether with Viennese songs in the Belvedere Park or in interviews about cultural life in Salzburg - you always feel: this is a very old love. And as far as I know, it began in Tyrol.

Jonas Kaufmann: That's right. I grew up in Munich, and from there you were relatively quickly at the Achensee in Tyrol, where my grandparents had rented a former farm, in whose stable the neighbor still kept his young cattle.

Besides our trips to Italy, the countless weekends and holidays at the Achensee were the highlights of the year for me. The lake, the farm, the cowbells behind the wooden wall at night, the wonderful landscape - all of this immediately put me in a holiday mood. There I could move freely and didn't have to, as in Munich, always stay at mother's hand. There was also an old black and white TV here and so I grew up with Austrian television programming. In this way, alongside Petzi and Am Dam Des by Heinz Conrads, I also got to know all the great Austrian entertainers, from Hans Moser to Peter Alexander.

How important is entertainment to you?

JK: Very! Entertainment is so much more to me than just laughing and slapping your thighs. Good entertainment encompasses everything that emotionally reaches an audience and has an aftereffect. Good entertainment is when you leave the theater with a smile on your face or even with a tear in your eye. The worst scenario you can imagine is that the audience thinks: When is the intermission finally coming?

The operetta as the royal discipline has not yet found a place in Erl. "Im weißen Rössl" in Erl – with Jonas Kaufmann! Wouldn't that be something?

JK: In the footsteps of Peter Alexander as waiter Leopold? At least I have often sung the hit "Es muss was Wunderbares sein", once also in a duet with Helene Fischer. But since we are not in Salzburg here, but in Tyrol, "Der Vogelhändler" would be the first operetta choice: after all, Adam, the main character, comes from Tyrol!

Is Erl an option for a new or second home? 

JK: Maybe, in 20 years, when the youngest is out of the house. Erl is already a fascinating place: actually you want to go on vacation here and not work. But experiencing music here is also something different. If I want to experience the Philharmonic in Berlin, I have to fight through the hustle and bustle of the city and then maybe have ten minutes in the foyer to collect myself before the concert begins. And in Erl, with not even 2000 inhabitants, this deceleration begins much earlier. That is unique in this size.

Will we experience Jonas Kaufmann on TikTok, luring a young audience to Erl? Many cultural institutions are going this way – you too?

JK: Laughs. No, I don't think I will be seen on TikTok. But we have a young team that creatively takes care of our presence on social networks. I think it's wrong to attract a new younger audience by driving away the older regular audience, as often happens with artistic director changes. Without this regular audience, we wouldn't exist.

How do you want to influence the productions as artistic director?

JK: By being there from the beginning to see where the director's idea goes. And not only at the end, when the child may have fallen into the well. With all artistic freedoms, I want to constructively accompany the production steps and put my feeling of boundaries and taboos up for discussion.

You are a singer and actor who has been through all the stage waters. Should all artistic directors be "stage-approved"?

JK: Basically, I think it's very desirable to have artistic directors who know the feeling of standing on stage themselves. People with this practical experience know what it's like when you don't feel comfortable on stage. You are sensitized and that helps a lot in the artistic director profession.

When do you feel comfortable on stage? When a performance opens new worlds and makes utopias visible?

JK: When it takes us into another world, lets us feel something that we don't feel in everyday life. That's why opera was so successful and popular for a long time, like cinema is today.

Can't opera get something back from cinema?

JK: I find it fascinating how cinema and series are very successfully riding a retro wave. Think of all the series about royal houses, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, or the numerous fantasy materials on Netflix, Amazon and Co. You immerse yourself in a completely different world. With meticulousness, stage and costume images are created for this. Many find that much more exciting than people standing on stage in black suits. You see something like that every day.

So there will be "Parsifal" at Easter with a real spear and grail?

JK: We will show a modern reading, a world far from any concrete conception of space and time. But the spear is a spear and the grail is the grail. That you don't "translate" these elements is almost already a small revolution.

And what other operas are planned?

JK: In the summer we bring the popular trio by Verdi: "Rigoletto", "Il Trovatore" and "La Traviata". We combine these blockbusters with an opera by George Benjamin, which was only premiered in 2023 and which hardly anyone knows. And "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" by Bartok in the direction of Claus Guth.

Since your home in Salzburg is only a stone's throw away, you will be seen in Erl more often... 

JK: In the artistic director's office and in the auditorium definitely! I can come from Salzburg in slippers and drive back at night if necessary. But only when I am in Salzburg; since I as a singer don't want to retire yet, the one or other trip to Erl will then also take a bit longer.