Rebecca Nash will sing the title role in tonight’s performance of Strauss’s Elektra, replacing Nina Stemme.
This evening marks Australian soprano Rebecca Nash’s Met debut as well as her role debut as Elektra. Recent performances include debuts as the Dyer’s Wife in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Vienna State Opera and Germany’s Theater Kiel, and the title role in Puccini’s Turandot at the Verdi Theater in Padua.
Patrice Chéreau’s staging of Elektra also starsLise Davidsen as Chrysothemis, Michaela Schuster as Klytämnestra, Stefan Vinke as Aegisth, and Greer Grimsley as Orest. The conductor is Donald Runnicles.
Remaining performances are April 16 and 20.
For further information, please visit www.metopera.org
She was magnificent and it is hard to believe that this was not her Met debut year as well as her debut in this extraordinarily challenging title role. Her singing & acting were performed with beauty, grace and compassion.
Wow, was she ever dull and uninspiring in that role. The Met should apologize to Rebecca Nash for putting her in a position to fail, and it should be embarrassed for putting someone on stage who is obviously not up to the role.
I don’t know where you were sitting, but that was not my impression at all. I found it a totally engaged, committed and moving performance, both musically and dramatically. My only reservation is that, ideally, one wants a more powerful voice for that role in such a big house. Nevertheless, I have heard bigger voices do far less with the material.
Clearly we heard it differently. Her voice was weak, often drowned out by the (fabulous) music, totally overawed by Davidsen, and when Davidsen wasn’t on stage to sustain interest, the production became insipid. That opera is more dependent on having a star than most, and it didn’t.
Sounds to me like someone was so bitter about not hearing Stemme that he was incapable of appreciating a highly talented, if not ideal, artist.
I truly agree. She’s a good singer but her voice lacks volume and was almost drowned by the orchestra. She’s better fitted to perform in a smaller house, like the Amato opera.
That’s a cruel and snotty comment. She would do brilliantly in almost any house with a seating capacity under 3,000. And she will do. very well at the Met in works with an orchestra of fewer than Elektra’s 110.
Whew! Will is catty, cruel and lacks an ear to hear or an eye to see.
Agree with Golo.
To be fair, a lot of good singers have a difficult projecting well enough to “fill” the Met, including some of my favorite singers. The size of the hall creates unique challenges.
I must say I’d heard Nina Stemme sing the role April 1st and April 9th (I like this show). And yes, I was also there last night (the 12th) with a friend who’s only been to perhaps 5 operas in her life. I was certainly disappointed to find that insert in the program announcing the substitution.
Stemme was such a knockout, and her vocal intensity matched Lise Davidsen’s and Michaela Shuster’s (Chrysothemis & Klytämnestra). Rebecca Nash’s did not.
There was an undeniable sense of imbalance among the vocal instruments. And yes—absolutely—the orchestra all but drowned her out for long sections of the show.
I’m not qualified to critique any soprano’s technical gifts, but the high points for Nash were in fact many.
My friend spontaneously said: “What a wonderful actress!” I replied: “You felt that too?” There was great detail and finesse in Nash’s characterization of Elektra. She handled the quiet passages very well; in some respects she surpassed Stemme—I thought—in finding dramatic contour in Elektra’s exchanges with Orestes.
But she lacked the vocal projection needed to communicate Elektra’s off-the-rails intensity, and at time simply failed to penetrate the stupendous shimmering surges of Strauss’s orchestration. In those passages, the deep saturation and color of the orchestra upstaged her totally.
Rebecca Nash has considerable—even deeply impressive—gifts, but one might agree: This was not the best choice for her Met debut.
I agree with your appraisal. I can’t imagine making your Met debut and your debut in a particular role — any role — at the same time, but doing both in this role??!! She gets full marks for courage, at least.
I saw Rebecca Nash at this performance on April 12, and, though I was compelled by her acting, some of the other commenters who say her voice wasn’t up to Lise Davidsen’s are sadly correct. I sat in the back of the orchestra section, and she did get drowned out by the orchestra on the lower notes. Her high notes on the other hand were definitely audible and powerful, but it was a little like turning the volume up and down throughout the opera. I think she did well but if possible she needed to project more. I’m not an opera expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I really really really enjoyed it, all things considered it. Her acting saved the experience for me, I’m sick of opera singers who can’t act well. At least she expressed emotion through her body.