Ill opera star Kaufmann cancels shows for ‘prolonged rest’

New York’s Metropolitan Opera has stepped in to help save a highly-anticipated Paris production of the “Tales of Hoffmann”, it said Tuesday, after the star German tenor Jonas Kaufmann was forced to pull out.

It freed up the Mexican tenor Ramon Vargas to take up the role at the Opera Bastille in November even though he would miss three performances at the Met as Don Ottavio in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni”.

In an extremely rare move Kaufmann, 47, one of the world’s most popular singers, last week made public a letter explaining why he has to “stop singing” to allow ruptured blood vessels in his vocal chords to heal.

“I am very sorry that the cancellations have been the cause of so much disappointment and frustration,” he wrote.

And he warned that he may need “prolonged rest”.

As well as the “Tales of Hoffmann” in Paris, the singer has also had to pull out of the “Mastersingers of Nuremberg” in Munich and another recital in the French capital on October 13.

The French national opera, which runs the Bastille house, said that it had sent its “sincere thanks” to the Met for allowing Vargas, 56, to cross the Atlantic. He will sing in the opera from November 3 to 19.

Paul Appleby will take his place at the Met in New York.