Samantha Hankey as The Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos at the Wiener Staatsoper, February 2026 / Photo: Michael Poehn

After appearing this summer as Strauss’s Composer at Glyndebourne (and in a broadcast from two weeks ago) American mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey pivots on a heel to Dorabella in the Met’s production of Così fan tutte which opens on 23 September.

For now, standard mezzo fare is Hankey’s bread and butter. She was an Octavian of “impeccable grace and class” to Lise Davidsen’s Marschallin, an “unusually debonair” Stéphano, and an Erika of “radiant simplicity.”

Later this season, she’ll return to Octavian in the Berlin Staatsoper’s tour to Shanghai and then again at Houston Grand Opera in addition to performances of Donna Elvira in Munich and Dorabella in Santa Fe next summer. In addition to her Glyndebourne run as the Composer, she also performed the role in Vienna last February. Orsolya Gyárfás caught a performance of this run for Parterre Box and had a glowing reaction:

Above all stood Samantha Hankey’s impassioned, boyishly earnest Composer, in a performance that merits nothing but praise. Hankey’s smoky-hued mezzo, remarkably even and well-projected through her entire range, sailed through the role’s soprano heights with ease, offering sensitive phrasing and searing intensity: her “Sein wir wieder gut!” would allow no questions that music is the holiest of all arts.

Today’s clip, an in-house recording from the Staatsoper, hails from that run. And if this sample floats your boat, you can hear Hankey sing the role stateside when Lyric Opera of Chicago performs Ariadne auf Naxos next spring.

Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos, “Sein wir wieder gut”

Samantha Hankey

Conductor: Cornelius Meister
Wiener Staatsoper
25 February 2026
In-house