Leïla — Les pêcheurs de perles

February 2016 Performance

The Metropolitan Opera  |  New York City, NY

Conductor: Antony Walker
Production: Penny Woolcock

REVIEWS:

"Amanda Woodbury sang Leila in the final performance of Bizet’s delicious Pearl Fishers. James Conlon, whose taste in singers is impeccable, has promoted Woodbury at the Los Angeles Opera and also in Cincinnati. Her lovely lyric voice is clear and sweet, but also full of emotion. In her aria, which begins with a prayer and ends on a love note, she comfortably switches between extreme moods.” —Susan Hall, Berkshire Fine Arts

"Whatever Woodbury ends up singing […] what should make her a star is the timbre of her upper-middle notes. […] an unusually vivid and transparently emotion-bearing sound that stands out in the most pleasant way. The very top notes are big and by now nicely integrated, but aren't the main course...

At least as importantly for this event (and, I suppose, her future prospects), Woodbury seems much more naturally attuned to the ebb and flow of rapt feeling demanded here (and in most romantic opera leads) than her more famous predecessor. The emotional shapes sat as well in her phrases as in her voice, finally allowing the first-act tension with the crowd and the tenor to cohere into an eloquent story. The latter acts were, in this new whole, more poignant as well, not merely exciting (though they were that)."—JSU, An Unamplified Voice