The Latvian opera star soprano Kristine Opolais made a spectacular Metropolitan opera debut in a role of Magda in Puccini’s opera La Rondine. Her performance has earned extremely high critical praise.

Ms. Opolais lived up to expectations in “La Rondine.” A lovely woman and an affectingly natural actress, she has a plush voice with a throbbing richness that lends a touch of poignancy to every phrase she sings, even when she’s being coquettish. It took some courage to make her Met debut in a role she was singing for the first time. She was tentative at first, though it is hard to start off strongly given the way Puccini introduces this character.

The New York Times. Read more

A wayward bouquet conked Kristine Opolais on her noggin during the ovation Friday night in “La Rondine” — but that was the only mishap in the Latvian soprano’s spectacular Met debut. Her coolly glamorous voice rose to the many challenges of the role of Magda, a Parisian courtesan who tries to live out a fantasy of finding true love in Puccini’s 1917 opera. Opolais floated shimmering high piano notes in her pensive first act aria, the “Canzone di Doretta.” Later, full-voiced B’s and C’s sailed into the huge Met auditorium. Lower down, the sound wasn’t as sumptuous, but she mustered gutsy chest tones for her dramatic farewell in the last act.

The New York Post. Read more

 

Yet despite the work’s slightness, Ms. Opolais seemed to live within it, growing in stature as the evening went on and radiating the kind of aura—one that demands that you watch her, and sympathize with her—that defines a star. (...)It was Ms. Opolais’s evening. At the end of the opera, having left her lover, she is bathed in a spotlight, arms outstretched and face stricken. There is little room for extremity in this opera, which remains stubbornly tasteful and small in scope, but Ms. Opolais found it. Like any good operatic performance, she had become specific and mythical: the very embodiment of isolation and pain. She is a performer with a tremendous future ahead of her; New York will be lucky to have her.

The New York Observer. Read more

At just 33-years of age, Opolais is a fully mature artist who possesses a magnificent instrument and commands the stage elegantly. Her sound is dark, heavy, but potent and full of lush colors.

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Latinospost.com. Read more