Salome (Patricia Racette) performing the Dance of the Seven Veils.
With her are (left to right) Attack Theatre’s Nick Coppula, Anthony Williams, and Dane Toney.
David Bachman Photography
Courtesy of Pittsburgh Opera
Received from the Met:
Patricia Racette will add a new role to her Met repertory as the title character in all performances of Strauss’s Salome this season, replacing the originally announced Catherine Naglestad. Ms. Naglestad was forced to withdraw from the performances, which were to be her Met debut, for medical reasons that will prevent her traveling to America as scheduled.
Racette is currently singing Salome with Pittsburgh Opera, and has previously sung the role with San Antonio Opera and in concert at the Ravinia Festival. Later this season, she will sing the role with Los Angeles Opera. She has sung 170 Met performances of 19 different roles over the course of her career with the company, in a varied repertory that has recently included Nedda in the new production of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci; Maddalena in Giordano’s Andrea Chénier; the title role of Puccini’s Tosca; Madame Lidoine in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites; Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly; Leonora in Verdi’s Il Trovatore; and the three principal soprano roles in Puccini’s Il Trittico. This spring, she will make another Met role debut when she sings her first company performances of Roxane in Alfano’s Cyrano.
Salome, conducted by Johannes Debus in his Met debut, will also star Nancy Fabiola Herrera as Herodias, Gerhard Siegel as Herod, Kang Wang in his Met debut as Narraboth, and Željko Lučić as Jochanaan. The revival opens December 5, with additional performances on December 9, 13, 17 matinee, 24, and 28.This is a bit of a surprise; I did not expect this assumption to go further than LA! Here's a review of the just-opened Pittsburgh production.
4 comments:
Looks like the Pat haters on Parterre are already predicting her doom. I hope she does well. I feel like Salome is a solid choice for this stage in her career, and dramatically she'll be well suited to the Flimm production.
Ha, yes. I don't understand the hate.
I imagine the voice fetishists have never warmed to her -- it's not a plush, naturally beautiful sound. And I didn't think her recent Neddas at the Met were a great assumption of the role, and she herself acknowledged that the Trovatore Leonora was not her role (I agree). But I've seen her quite often, and I've never seen her give anywhere near the disastrous performances that some claim she gives repeatedly. Quite the opposite, actually. And I've always found her dramatically committed.
I am a big fan. And her voice has taken some hits from all the heavier roles she has sung - a reviewer friend remembers her as having a very beautiful voice 20 years ago....
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