ChristineRice

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Mezzo-Soprano
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News

  • 30 April 2024

    Royal Opera 2024/25 season to feature 22 Askonas Holt artists

    Read full article
  • 18 March 2024

    Bayerische Staatsoper 2024/25 season to feature 23 Askonas Holt artists

    Read full article

Press

  • Britten - Peter Grimes (Auntie)

    English National Opera
    Sep 2023 - Oct 2023

    • 'Christine Rice’s butch publican Auntie, her horror-film-ish nieces (Cleo Lee-McGowan and Ava Dodd) and Alex Otterburn’s Suffolk wide boy Ned Keene are intensely compelling.'

    • 'Christine Rice’s plush-voiced Auntie is always watchable'

    • 'Christine Rice especially is luxury casting as Auntie'

    • 'Rice is luxury casting, filling Britten’s vocal lines with her warm, burnished mezzo,'

    • 'All the characters were strongly drawn and wonderfully costumed. There were no weak links whatsoever. Christine Rice as Auntie was most eye-catching'

    • 'Christine Rice’s succulent-toned Auntie out-stares the audience with daring defiance as she pulls her puppets’ strings.'

  • Wagner - Tristan und Isolde

    Grange Park Opera
    Jun 2023

    • "Christine Rice is luxury casting as Brangäne. Her contrasting richness with Nicholls’ soprano suggests a character more in touch with and at home in the world Isolde so thoroughly rejects, though her own fearsome top notes channeled the distress and fury both characters feel. Her offstage warning, always a high point of Act two, was otherworldly, and she was situated just far enough away to render it truly ghostly."

    • "Around this central due are some fine, responsive Wagnerian singers, especially the two servants Brangane (Christine Rice), Isolde's maid, and Kurwenal (David Stout) as Tristan's henchman who also perishes."

    • "Christine Rice offers a superbly nuanced Brangäne, full of colour and detail."

    • "The Brangäne of Christine Rice rudely stole the vocal honours; as if it was not enough to be given the plumb number of her exquisite Act 2 warning, she sang with such tone, control and phrasing that one understood Tristan’s response in his following line, “Now let me die”."

    • "Christine Rice was a glowingly sung Brangäne, David Stout an impressively strong Kurwenal, and Matthew Rose a deeply considered, resonant King Marke."

    • "Christine Rice and Matthew Rose also give standout performances as Brangäne and King Marke respectively, Rice smoothly warm in tone and Rose devastating on discovering he has been betrayed by Tristan."

      • The Stage

  • Wagner - Das Rheingold

    English National Opera
    Feb 2023

    • The arrival of Erda [...], sung impressively by Christine Rice, also created the necessary gravity and impact, together heralding the tragedy of the curse of the Ring that will (we hope) play out in future installments. As noted above, Christine Rice in particular made that small but significant and truly Wagnerian impression as Erda, but there were notable performances also from John Relyea as Wotan, Leigh Melrose as Alberich, and a suitably shifty portrayal of Loge by Frederick Ballentine.

    • Elsewhere in the strong cast, Christine Rice’s star-quality Erda and John Findon’s Mime stand out.

    • Christine Rice sang an excellent Erda, the mysterious goddess who rises from her sleep to warn Wotan of impending doom if he retains the ring.

    • Christine Rice is luxury casting as Erda, and Madeleine Shaw a multi-faceted Fricka.

    • [...] the best performance overall came from mezzosoprano Christine Rice in the relatively small part of Erda, the earth goddess, who brought great authority back to the proceedings when she came to steer Wotan away from disastrous actions.

    • Wonderful to see Christine Rice as an all-knowing Erda, deeply wise despite her pyjamas (!), and also deeply resonant of voice.

    • Christine Rice as Erda, goddess of the earth, is an absolute star with an ideal, dark-crimson vocal range.

    • Christine Rice delivers a highly charged scene as Erda.

    • And smack on the button are Christine Rice’s Erda, pouring forth sumptuous tone as she warns Wotan to give up the Ring and Frederick Ballentine’s nifty Loge, crafty and charismatic as he acts as a disloyal Mr Fixit.

    • This is the most emotional moment of the evening in an opera which tends to the schematic, Christine Rice luxury casting indeed. It starts with a slap and continues with a violent kiss, both pertinent but startling.

  • Britten - Gloriana

    English National Opera
    Dec 2022

    • The cast (which included Robert Murray as a testosterone-fuelled Earl of Essex, and Christine Rice burning the house down as Elizabeth I – imperious, vulnerable and capricious) performed in ruffs and breeches against a black-clad chorus, while period engravings were projected on a gauze screen.

    • As Queen Elizabeth I, Gloriana herself, Christine Rice certainly portrayed both the monarch’s strength and vulnerability, as she juggled political and personal challenges. A demanding role vocally, she encompassed its histrionic range from tenderness to fiery outbursts – the shrillness one always hears is written in – and even, in the curiously shocking dress-swapping scene of Act 2, Scene 3, a discreditable sarcasm. Although some of her final melodrama used recorded speech, she was at the very end a touching and capable diseuse. This was Rice’s role debut, and quite a commitment to learn for a one-off occasion, if that is what it proves to be.

    • It’s music that Christine Rice delivered wonderfully here, as well as portraying the aged queen with touching candour.

    • Rice, singing Elizabeth for the first time, gave one of her greatest performances to date, admirably secure over the wide span of Britten’s vocal lines, and superbly characterised, the private doubts that offset the public self-assurance wonderfully conveyed.

    • At the centre of everything, Christine Rice’s magnificent Elizabeth was a repressed authoritarian queen who softened only when Essex appeared, and whose final disintegration caused her to reflect ruefully on her past.

    • Christine Rice gave a superbly committed performance as the Queen, calmly dispassionate as she appeared in state but showing deeper strains of emotion as she engaged with the private conflict between love for the impetuous Essex and duty to God and country – the latter fervently expressed in the prayer which closes Act One.

  • Puccini - Madama Butterfly

    Royal Opera House
    Sep 2022

    • One cast change: Christine Rice replaced Kseniia Nikolaieva as Suzuki, offering a superb prayer in Act II. Interactions with Cio-Cio-San in the final act and in the second act Flower Duet (Tutti i for?’) worked beautifully; another experienced hand adding stability to the production.

    • With her rich mezzo-soprano, Christine Rice, who replaces a previously advertised Kseniia Nikolaieva, is luxury casting as Suzuki and suggests a particularly caring figure. This almost manifests itself at the start of Act II as anger at Cio-Cio-San’s seemingly blind faith, but as she listens to ‘Un bel dì’ her hands appear to alternate between praying and reaching out to try to support her mistress.

    • Elsewhere, Christine Rice was a dutiful and pitying Suzuki, intermittently venting her frustrations, at one point throwing a malevolent Goro (Carlo Bosi) to the ground, later adding rich tones to a poignant Flower Duet.

  • Britten - Phaedra

    Bath
    Aug 2022

    • Phaedra is a revival of the spare but powerful lockdown production staged by Warner for Covent Garden in 2020, powerfully sung and acted once again by Christine Rice. Written in 1975 for Janet Baker, Britten’s 20-minute work cherry-picks its lines from Robert Lowell’s verse translation of the play. Racine’s anti-heroine demands (and gets) tremendous performances (Glenda Jackson’s unforgettable reading in the 1984 Philip Prowse production regularly led to audience members being stretchered off). Rice growls, whispers, screams the libretto, her mind and body consumed by a doomed passion for her stepson, eaten up by lust and remorse. Her desire for him — “I want your sword’s spasmodic final inch” — is delivered with an almost orgasmic convulsion.

    • Originally composed for Janet Baker, it’s performed here with incredible intensity by Christine Rice, accompanied by Richard Hetherington on the piano. The clarity of Rice’s singing, and her deep involvement with the story, bring its terrible passions to heart-piercing life.

    • Leading mezzo-soprano Christine Rice reprises her Olivier Award-nominated performance in Phaedra which was a hit at the Royal Opera House in 2020. She gave an outstanding and intensely dramatic performance in the title role, accompanied by Richard Hetherington on piano and dancers Jonathan Goddard and Tommy Franzen.

    • Mezzo-soprano Christine Rice in the title role gives us a visceral and despairing heroine who falls madly in love with her step-son, Hippolytus, on the day of her wedding to his father, Theseus. It doesn't end well, of course (spoiler alert), with Phaedra taking her own life. Rice sings at resonant Royal Opera House volume, filling the modest 126-seat auditorium, displaying a variety of bold emotions from love, lust and longing to guilt, despair and shame. Rice is excellent as a passionate and agonised Phaedra, admirably accompanied by pianist and Ustinov director of music Richard Hetherington.

    • Christine Rice makes the role completely her own: she takes us on an emotional journey equivalent to a full-length opera, with vocalism that ranges from near-whisper to exultant shout, allied to anguished physicality and direct human expressiveness.

    • Today in Christine Rice we have a mature, passionate performance which aches with desire and shame. Her voice is pure, her connection to us is tangible – and her communication with pianist Richard Hetherington is really touching. As she wraps herself in the scent of her shame, Rice shrinks before our eyes – commanding our attention and sympathy in equal measure.