Irene Roberts as Kundry in PArsifal at the Bayerische Staatsoper, March 2024 / Photo: W. Hösl
After having featured the current Munich Walküre‘s Brünnhilde, Miina-Liisa Värelä, earlier this month, Grand Tier Grab Bag turns its attention to its Sieglinde, the American mezzo Irene Roberts, who has an exciting season on the horizon.
Roberts, a native Californian, has followed a time-worn tradition for American singers and established herself in Europe, specifically in Germany where she was an Ensemble Member at the Deutsche Oper Berlin from 2015-2024. Last year, she made her Bayreuth debut as Venus in Tannhaüser, with Parterre Box critic Christian Ocier saying that she “revealed a lyric instrument of promise in this repertory, compact at the onset but blossoming into a more richly colored, house-filling mezzo with the opera’s progression.”
But Roberts’s high mezzo makes her viable in some of the classic Zwischenfach roles, like Sieglinde, Judith, which she brings to Aix-en-Provence next month, and Santuzza, which she’ll sing in Dresden in January.
But it’s next spring when things really heat up: in February she’ll be Brangäne in Berlin, a role in which her “full, round timbre declared a strong presence,” according to Madison Schindele, and then in July, she’ll sing her first Isolde at the Tiroler Festpiele Erl opposite the Tristan of John Matthew Myers.
This week, Parterre Box features a bit of this erstwhile Carmen, Dorabella, and Isabella as Kundry in a performance recorded in Berlin in 2024.
Wagner: Parsifal, “Ich sah das Kind an seiner Mutter Brust”
Irene Roberts
Donald Runnicles, conductor
Deutsche Oper Berlin
September 2024
In-house
