Over the past 20 years, Nina Stemme has become one of our finest dramatic sopranos. She had already sung numerous lyric and lyric-dramatic roles (think Cherubino in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro for the former, Puccini’s Tosca for the latter). But voices can develop, and, since the early 2000s, the Swedish singer has been tackling the most formidable soprano heavyweights. Wagner’s Isolde, Puccini’s Turandot, Strauss’s Salome: in these roles and their sisters, Stemme has earned extraordinary acclaim and attracted a committed fanbase – myself among them. I was blown away by her Isolde in New York in 2016. I thrilled to the power of her Brünnhilde in London in 2018.
Such roles inevitably take their toll. In a relatively intimate venue such as London’s Wigmore Hall, voices that can feel colossal even in the vast auditorium at the Metropolitan Opera or at the Royal Opera House have nowhere to hide. This is listening in closeup.
