At Lyric Opera, Sondra Radvanovsky sings a ‘Medea’ for the ages
“…Radvanovsky’s Medea is no snipe. She is a roaring force from the underworld, existing vocally, as Medea must, at the intersection of pain, pleading and panic at the strength and thus the potential consequences of her own emotions. For one who feels such agony at betrayal must feel the dangerous power of love herself.
What a performance from Radvanovsky!
At times, one swears one hears otherworldly sounds, even if Cherubini’s opportunistic music hardly is traditionally expressionistic. At others, her interpretation veers towards conversational reality. “Well, then,” she sings (in translation from the Italian), as she makes her argument, and let’s remember that she who blew her life up for her man with one sacrifice after another always comes with a very good argument.
Heck, all he offered in return was an entree to this smug, snobbish place of his birth. An asset to the arrogant Corinthian men, worthless to Medea once Jason walks.
Radvanovsky’s performance is great because she understands that Medea actually is experiencing chaos in real time, a rush of confusing passion of which she herself never before has known the like. She sings the role in the moment, as if nothing is pre-determined. She sings her as if the train headed toward her horrific and self-destructive ending is gathering steam with every note and Medea both knows she must fight against it and that there may well be nothing she can do to halt its trajectory.
Ergo, tragic inevitability, writ operatic.
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?
There’s another side to Medea, too. She burns with sexual passion as Radvanovsky makes all too clear. Oh, does she ever!”
Chicago Tribune
“Sondra Radvanovsky has sung the role of Medea to acclaim at the Met and elsewhere. The celebrated soprano brought the requisite vocal power as well as scary dramatic intensity to the role of the title sorceress who is abandoned by her husband Jason (Giasone) and vows to wreak havoc on all.
With her bedraggled hair, Radvanovsky’s Medea was often a pitiable figure in the first two acts, crawling on the ground in pleading supplication for Giasone to return to her. She sang with tenderness in her Act I duet with Jason and retrospective moments recalling their past happy times. Yet when Medea goes full sorceress, the soprano brought jarring intensity to her vows of vengeance.
The role of Medea is one of the great voice-shredders, yet Radvanovsky rose to the daunting challenge of the final act, which is essentially an unbroken 35-minute mad scene. The soprano tackled all the formidable challenges, flinging out the leaping top notes, handling the bursts of rapid vocalism and making Medea’s frenzied indecision about whether to not to murder her children to get revenge on Giasone nerve-wracking and harrowing. A memorable, genuinely great performance by a singer at the peak of her career.”
Chicago Classical Review
“In a role that is legendary for the musical and expressive demands it places on the soprano, Sondra Radvanovsky gave a definitive reading that made the passionate obsession of Medea come to life. The phrasing, dynamics, articulation and pacing came together to express the character’s conflicting emotions, from her entrance as an uninvited guest at Jason’s wedding to the final phrases that show her consummate revenge for his transgressions. Radvanovsky was persuasive in her Act II scene with Creonte (‘Dei tuoi figli la madre’) in which she obtained another day in Corinth purportedly to see her children, and she etched the final scene of Act III (‘Numi, venite a me’) with unmistakable power. The entire performance had a physicality that few can deliver, with the musical details fully in place and under Radvanovsky’s complete control.”
“Soprano Sandra Radvanovsky takes on the title role with gusto. When Medea enters the opera, she is ready to forgive Giasone, if only he will take her back. Radvanovsky offers vocal pleas of ardor that establish her passionate nature but Giasone rejects any reconciliation. She then moves her attention to her children and convinces Giasone to let her see them. Here, Radvanovsky creates the bitter side of passion with great effect. When Giasone and Glauce are married, Medea becomes unhinged, ready to enact cruel revenge. The second act ends with her chilling prayer to the gods that they look down and smile upon her furious intent.
After the intermission, the final act sees Medea in all her mad glory as a woman who will make others pay dearly for her distress. She kills Glauce with poisoned gifts. She meets with her two sons and showers them with love. Radvanovsky then finds the blackest corner of her character’s heart and takes us on a ride of horror that includes the murder of her own children, her arms elbow deep in blood.
Radvanovsky had the audience in her hands from the moment she stepped on stage, and the curtain calls were dominated by raucous, prolonged cheers for her exciting performance.”
“Sondra Radvanovsky rises to meet those demands with a performance that can only be described as revelatory. She is one of the most dynamic, emotional singers on stage today, and her portrayal of Medea’s descent from wounded dignity to vengeful fury is nothing short of mesmerizing. Her voice carries the full weight of Medea’s rage and anguish yet never sacrifices beauty for dramatic effect. This is singing that cuts to the bone.”
“Radvanovsky, with a voice as pure as it is powerful (even when flat on her back or creeping across the stage like some silent-film villainess), confidently delivers the vocal and emotional intensity demanded by this marathon role made famous by Maria Callas in the 1950s.”
” Radvanovsky impressively writhes around the stage like a snake as she delivers a performance wallowing in despair and riven with rage.”
Windy City Times
“Sondra Radvanovsky’s portrayal of Medea confirms her status as one of our era’s most compelling dramatic sopranos. She brings to the role a fierce emotional intelligence, a voice of heroic dimension, and a dramatic instinct that never allows the character to settle into facile villainy. You sense the pain and torment, but also her love for both Giasone and their children. From her first entrance, Radvanovsky commands the stage—her power obvious, even as she spends a great deal of the performance literally crawling on the floor in abjection and sorrow.”
“The key to this outstanding production is soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, who has made the role hers with an excellent performance as Medea… Radvanovsky enters in Act II like a bolt of lightning and creates a maelstrom that holds throughout the performance… Maria Callas defined the role of Medea in a historic performance in Florence in 1953. I am saying that it now belongs to Radvanovsky.”
“Sondra Radvanovsky as Medea herself was just incredible. Employing every inch of her body, including, of course, her dazzling voice, Radvanovsky’s stirring rendering was able to masterfully convey the most intense, primal of emotions with an original, completely stupefying ease.”
North Star News
“Radvanovsky pulls it off with aplomb–she not only sings up a storm, sometimes literally, but also shows a tender side to her that, particularly in her scenes and duet with Polenzani, reveals the trauma that she has endured and the love that she still feels… But make no mistake: This is Medea’s opera. Arguably the greatest of several candidates for best mad scene in an opera is the finale, which Radvanovsky brought off with heart-pounding excitement on opening night, while McVicar’s terrifying staging refreshingly augmented the diabolical effect of the music rather than fighting against it.”
“Radvanovsky not only has a powerful lyric voice that captures Medea’s anguish and vulnerability, but she’s also able to project it while spending much of the run-time planking or otherwise in odd positions.”
“There’s a reason François-Benoît Hoffman, the librettist of Luigi Cherubini’s original French Médée (1797), oncecalled the composer a “terrorist musician.” The opera only works with the right soprano who can cut across its orchestration and tense, daring harmonic framework. Sondra Radvanovsky’s handling of the titular role in Medea at the Lyric Opera of Chicago establishes her as the ultimate scorned mother of our time …
Shimmering and merciless, Radvanovsky’s squillo remained constant through every vocal leap and perfectly anchored high notes, but the real fun came with her smoldering chest register in the finale “E che? Io son Medea.” Although Cherubini’s score never quite rises to meet the horror of Medea murdering her children, seeing Radvanovsky sprawled across the floor, soaked in their blood, is proof that we’re witnessing an utterly haunting singer-actor.
It was Radvanovsky’s theatrical presence that tied together one of the most ostentatious elements of the production—a oppressive mirror taking up the back of the stage—with the tragedy’s Ancient Greek origins. Watching her conspire with Neris and rage around the stage, reflected in that looming mirror, made the audience feel almost complicit like the Greek gods, never intervening as Medea destroys her life, and breaks her own oath as a mother, all to make Giasone suffer.”
Parterre