”...After my first aria I wanted to fly like Batman” says opera’s new sensation, a short young woman with an enigmatic, androgynous face who has just come off the huge stage of Paris’ Bastille Opera dressed as Romeo.
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In a great dramatic scene, where you want to bring a lot of energy but the music is still marked piano, you have to find a quiet way of bringing out all the intensity.” It is testimony to her success that even in the huge space of the Bastille her soft singing and intimate stage presence came across. When she sings, she once said, she tries not to offer a theatrically exaggerated interpretation, but an intimate account of the character, just as if she were telling it to her mother... " - Neil Evans, de Classic CD (feb. 1997).
"... Her Romeo was an old-fashioned performance in the very best sense of the term. There was nothing in the slightest superficial about it: every note was given full value, every word cleanly enunciated, even her physical performance had an aura of dignity that recalled the standards and the style of an earlier generation..." - Richard Fairman, de Gramophone (feb. 1997).
"The Bulgarian-born mezzo-soprano Vesselina Kasarova has what is arguably the most distinctive voice in opera today. Her singing is neither conventionally beautiful nor technically consistent. But her earthy, dusky-toned, vibrant voice is unforgettable and deeply affecting. But as Ms. Kasarova warmed up, her singing grew increasingly confident. She is not a powerhouse exponent of bel canto in the manner of Marilyn Horne, but her smoky, shimmering voice is enveloping. The flights of fioriture are never showy displays, but rather elegant elaborations of long-spun lines. In the tomb scene with Giulietta, some of Bellini's most pensive and quietly tragic music, Ms. Kasarova caressed the pianissimo phrases with plaintive, disarming beauty..." - Anthony Tommasini, de The New York Times (oct. 1999).
"...As for Kasarova, she continues to display the brilliant top and darkly resonant lower range that so impressed two years ago, and she commands a remarkable range of color. Her great scene at Juliet’s tomb was a tour-de-force of emotional focus and could not have been more vivid if it had been fully staged." - Shirley Fleming, de New York Post (oct. 1999).
"...Vocally they are exceptionally well matched. Indeed, so beautifully do the Hungarian soprano and the Bulgarian mezzo-soprano blend voices in their unison duet in Act I that Giulietta and Romeo seem truly united in spirit..." - John von Rhein, de Chicago Times (nov. 2001).
"...The rich, smoky timbre of Kasarova’s low register took on sinister force in Romeo’s furious Act I confrontation with Capellio (...) In more tender moments, the clarity and varied color of Kasarova’s mezzo revealed a heartbreakingly naïve young lover. Whether pleading with Capellio for Giulietta’s hand or expressing stunned anger at her tomb, this was a manchild facing profoundly adult torment. In the opera’s duets, the lovers’ voices soared, twisted and doubled back on each other like vines, sometimes fighting to break free, often serenely choosing the same path. With Bellini’s simple accompaniment often disappearing completely, the a cappella vocal lines seemed to glow in the silence of the rapt auditorium..." - Wynne Delacoma, de Chicago Sun-Times (nov. 2001).
"Mozart, she says, has always been a passion, and the role of Sesto (the Emperor Titus’s boyhood friend) is surely one of her most convincing characterisations so far.
For me Sesto is Mozart himself,” she says. “I can’t specify exactly why, but you can feel it. You can sense how much of himself he poured into the role. Mozart was the only composer I know who was actually biased against some of his characters. For those he didn’t like, he wrote music that was difficult to perform, unpleasant and unflattering to the character itself. I don’t mean that Sesto’s music is easy, on the contrary it’s very difficult; but it’s written with such love.
The same is arguably true of Cherubino. I’ve moved on from him, he’s too sweet, he’s not me any longer. But I do believe one needs to have sung Cherubino before singing Sesto. One of the absolute musts with Mozart is that you’ve got to be an actor as well as a singer. You can’t just use him as vehicle for showing off. You have to work out beforehand each detail – not just vocal, but physical as well, every move and gesture, because these, too, colour the vocal performance.
Sesto is not just young and headstrong, but an impassioned lover too. Everything he does, the mistaken treachery he embarks on, is all because of his love for Vitellia. His relationship with Tito, which he betrays but is ultimately pardoned for is one of love too. The opera is all about love – love binds the protagonists, but love also stands between them. In Act II, a thousand conflicting emotions make war in Tito. You know how much he still loves Sesto from the internal battle he goes through. As for Sesto, he’s sensitive, he’s erotic, and he’s completely blinded by love. My task in playing such a role is to embody the character in my own personality, to act as though it were me, and to react in the way I would have done in the same situation." - de A Bulgarian voice to blast you off your feet, Roderic Dunnett (The Independent, enero 2000).
"Her favorite role is Sesto, in Mozart’s other great opera seria, “La clemenza di Tito,” because of his “tragic personality. He has a kind of pure love for Vitellia which nowadays you don’t find. Desperation makes him strong. Mozart must have loved this role very much, because he filled it with so much wonderful music." - de From the heart – and brain, Sarah Bryan Miller (Chicago Tribune, oct. 1997).
" ... Vesselina Kasarova however, was an exceptional Sesto in every sense. Fully dedicated, body and soul, to the role, she sang with great feeling, expressiveness and beauty. She is probably the best possible interpreter of Sesto today and so was greatly appreciated by the audience. If her interpretation of “Parto, Parto” was magnificent, in the second act she did even better, really moving the audience in her beautiful rondo. This was a genuinely great performance, much better by far than when she sang the same role a couple of years ago at Barcelona's Liceu. ..."