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Stories   >   We got drunk and listened to Jonas Kaufmann - It's Christmas.... Oh, what fun / VAN

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We got drunk and listened to Jonas Kaufmann - It's Christmas.... Oh, what fun / VAN

Posted: November 27, 2020

VAN's Olivia Giovetti and Jeffrey Arlo Brown writes…Considering the bleak happenings that have defined 2020, we can all be thankful for one grand unifying event that restored a little bit of our faith in humanity: Jonas Kaufmann released a Christmas album. Not just any Christmas album: a two-hour, 42-track deluxe set of everything from traditional Alpine tunes (“Es wird scho glei dumpa”) to 20th-century standards (“White Christmas”) to… Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.” It is, as one might expect, a glorious overstuffed train wreck of gingerbread men, gumdrops, and frankincense that oozes figgy pudding and whose scent (somewhere between peppermint schnapps and Douglas fir) lingers for days. God bless us all, everyone. In the spirit of coming together in the most socially-distanced of ways, we set up a Zoom listening party for “It’s Christmas!” with two people we knew would be ideal sleigh ride partners: musicologist Aksel Tollåli and retroviral immunology PhD candidate, violinist, and Mariah Careyologist Kevin Ng. Alcohol was the fifth guest.

Olivia Giovetti: Before we start, do you all normally listen to Christmas music? Is that part of your seasonal thing?

Aksel Tollåli: I do, but I also sing in a choir, so Christmas music just happens from October onwards and it’s that very moody Scandinavian stuff about how your soul is inherently sinful and you’re gonna die soon.

Jeffrey Arlo Brown: So you’re kind of the typical audience for this album.

AT: Exactly.

Kevin Ng: I do not listen to Christmas music, actually. I think it’s a holdover from too many years in youth orchestra, where you always had to do that awful Christmas concert where you play “Sleigh Ride” at the end. Since then, I’ve just loathed Christmas music—apart from Mariah Carey, which I will blast very regularly out loud at work starting from late July.

JB: I’m Jewish, but I have been to a Mariah Carey Christmas concert live in Berlin. So I can get into it. There’s a Christmas CD that my aunt and uncle play at their house every Christmas Eve that always feels cosy and nice. I don’t put it on at home, but there are occasions where it feels right.

KN: I do also listen to “Christmas in Vienna” whenever I’m sad.

JB: Thoughts on the cover?

KN: “Aging uncle who thinks very highly of his appearance.”

AT: I just love how clearly it plays into this middle-aged, female, mitteleuropan opera-goer thing, which he’s been flirting with for all of his career but is now just sort of fully going for it. Which, to be honest, I’m here for.

JB: There’s a demographic of “People who Are Attractive to Your Aunt,” and I feel like he’s really going after that market.

KN: But two albums ago, he did that Mahler, where he recorded both parts, no? Which is a completely different clientele altogether.

AT: Except the Mahler was seven albums ago now.

KN: Is it? My God, I have not been keeping up.

AT: There is a lot of “Attractive Older Man Who Your Aunt Fancies” in between.

KN: Ooh! You can tell he’s singing in English because he’s overdoing every R so aggressively.

AT: I can’t wait for his Peter Grimes.

OG: I have so many questions about the diction in this. He’s sung in English before, and I don’t think I’ve heard him do this much over-correcting.

AT: I get it if you’re doing Mariah Carey, right? But when you’re doing Christmas carols, you can just stick to your standard BBC English, and that’s how everyone does it.

READ THE FULL VAN conversatiuon