Madrid (AFP)

It had been months since he had sung in front of live spectators.

In Madrid, German tenor Jonas Kaufmann underlined the "need" that opera singers have to see their audience and confided in his concern for the mental health of artists.

"What we've been missing" since the start of the health crisis, "is this connection. It doesn't matter that people wear masks. I will probably even feel their presence behind a curtain," told AFP on Thursday evening. the German lyric star, confessing his "excitement" to have sung in one of the few countries where theaters have remained open with strict health protocol.

"They are there and that is what counts, even if there is 10 meters between me and the first row!", Continued the tenor, aged 51, after having performed at the Royal Theater in Madrid a repertoire of 27 pieces, lieder and songs, accompanied by pianist Helmut Deutsch.

"For me, who am always on tour all year round, I have the impression that it's been ages since I had an audience in front of me", he confided in his dressing room, minutes after leaving the stage when his last concert in Denmark was in the fall.

Because virtual shows given online do not equal the public, he said.

“Normally there is the applause and then you relax you start to smile and you are fine. But when you only have eternal silence what can you do? It's embarrassing. So sorry but .. . public, we need you and we have you more than ever! ", he said earlier at a press conference.

"People need to be entertained, they need to forget, if only for two hours, all their sorrows, and if you take that right away from them, at the same time as you take away everything else, I think that this is a huge, huge mistake, ”he continued.

- Suicides -

The tenor also wanted to alert on the psychological difficulties caused by the pandemic among certain artists.

"It's not easy to bring this up in public, but I know of a number of suicides in our family of musicians, where they see no future", evoking "the lack of perspective, of help, of support "in" certain vulnerable souls who see no way out ... "," really terrible "situations.

He said he was personally "privileged" to still be able to give concerts.

"There are maybe two dozen singers in the world in this position, who are going to be called upon no matter what."

Finally, the tenor appealed to the authorities, urging them to reopen places of culture and to be inventive to keep art alive.

"We are not politicians (...) we are only voices, and we need others to help us create something so that at the end of it all, and I hope there will be an end, we found a cultural landscape similar to the one we left behind when this crisis began. "

"This is the very first time that music has been extinguished in this way in the midst of a crisis," he insisted.

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