Nina Stemme and Sara Jakubiak in Elektra / Photo: Tristan Kenton

Sara Jakubiak is back onstage in Milan this evening after opening La Scala’s season on Sunday in Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and Grand Tier Grab Bag highlights this important debut with a bit of her Chrysothemis recorded in London last year.

Jakbuiak’s current run as Katerina Izmailova, her second attempt at the part, anticipates an exciting 2026; the American soprano will sing Elsa in Hamburg in the spring before making her role debut as Isolde with Antonio Pappano conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in July. Her Tristan in London will be Clay Hilley, another American who has staked out a career almost entirely in Europe and who recently sang his part in Berlin.

Today’s excerpt, Chrysothemis’s entrance monologue, features the interjections of Ausrine Stundyte‘s Elektra rather than the announced (and pictured) Nina Stemme who canceled most of her performances in the run, including the one recorded here.

Strauss: Elektra, “Ich kann nicht sitzen und ins Dunkel starren”

Sara Jakubiak
Ausrine Stundyte

Conductor, Antonio Pappano
Royal Ballet and Opera, Covent Garden
January 2024
Broadcast