The second cancellation is for this week: Kaufmann had been scheduled to sing the title role in two performances of Verdi's Don Carlo at the Zurich Opera House, the company with which he works most often. There appears to be no announcement of Kaufmann's illness or withdrawal in the German or Swiss press or on the company's website, where his name on the cast list was quietly replaced early today with that of Fabio Armiliato.
A representative of Kaufmann's management agency in New York confirmed to PlaybillArts that the tenor is simply suffering from a very bad cold. He remains scheduled to take the tenor solos in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra to open Carnegie Hall's season in early October, and he still intends to return to Zurich for late October and November runs of Don Carlo and K‹nigskinder by Engelbert Humperdinck, the composer of H‹nsel und Gretel.
