Grigorian's Vocally Dazzling Butterfly
The Lithuanian soprano brings star quality to Royal Opera Puccini, while ENO's ensemble ethic brings drama to Janáček
Japanese Wedding: Asmik Grigorian (Cio-Cio-San) and Joshua Guerrero (Pinkerton) Picture by Marc Brenner
Despite almost daily news of doom and gloom surrounding opera in the UK, the capital still offers events to raise the spirit and gladden the heart. Any appearance by today’s diva-du-jour, the Lithuanian soprano, Asmik Grigorian, is something to write home about, and sure enough her role debut at Covent Garden as Madama Butterfly - a part she recently sang in Vienna and will soon repeat in Berlin - raised what might have seemed a routine revival of Puccini’s potboiler into something out-of-the-ordinary. Indeed, I’d rate her as one of the most remarkable incarnations of the title role among the 70 or so I have heard.
Grigorian’s rise to “overnight stardom” was, in fact gradual and meticulously charted. Before her acclaim as Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Salzburg Festival in 2018 she had spent 15 years in her native Lithuania, and later as a member of Berlin’s Komische Oper, singing everything from Mozart to late 19th Century Russian roles and Puccini. Only a year after her Salzburg “breakthrough” she appeared to rapturous acclaim as Tatyana in Barrie Kosky’s production of Yevgeny Onyegin at the Edinburgh festival. Such was the buzz around her performances that he Covent Garden debut in a new production of Janáček’s Jenufa came two years later, followed by another new look at a Czech opera, Dvorak’s Rusalka last season. Her return so soon in a revival of standard rep work gives hope that she might become a regular visitor here, gracing us with her Salome, her Lisa in The Queen of Spades, possibly even her Lady Macbeth or Turandot, her two most recent prises de rôle, ecstatically received in Salzburg - where she also sang all three of the female leads in Puccini’s Trittico - and Vienna.
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