Marianne Crebassa / Photo: Simon Fowler, courtesy of IMG Artists

French mezzo soprano Marianne Crebassa makes a rare return to staged opera later this month in the Liceu’s La Clemenza di Tito as Sesto opposite the Tito of Jack Swanson and the Vitellia of Karina Deshayes and conducted by Jordi Savall. To mark the occasion, Parterre Box shares some of Crebassa in a recent opera-adjacent role, Marguerite in La damnation de Faust.

Despite success on the operatic stage in everything from Carmen to George Benjamin, Crebassa’s recent and upcoming appearances are almost exclusively in concerts. Certainly this choice is not for want of stage presence; after a performance of Benjamin’s Picture a Day Like This, Parterre Box critic Nigel Wilkinson said that “her dark, rich, complex timbre, with undertones of old British contraltos, fills the house in a way few voices do. A triumph of contained vehemence.”

Earlier this year, Crebassa appeared in a recital at the Leeds Song Festival (formerly known as Leeds Lieder) in a recital program that includes French songs as well as Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. It was recorded and is available for streaming.

Charles Dutoit, the disgraced conductor who made a rare appearance as conductor of today’s performance which was recorded last spring at Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, attests to a point recently made here that an increasingly globalized opera world means that no artist can truly be canceled.

Berlioz: La damnation de Faust, “D’amour l’ardente flamme”

Marguerite: Marianne Crebassa

Conductor: Charles Dutoit
Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
15 June 2026
Broadcast