Eva-MariaWestbroek

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Soprano
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Press

  • Berg - Wozzeck (Marie)

    Opera de Paris, Paris
    Mar 2022

    • Eva‑Maria Westbroek, whose timbre combines brilliance and roundness, portrays a highly sung Marie, with superb high notes, both sensual and resigned

    • Admirable show carried by a superlative cast once again, with the sumptuous Marie by Eva-Maria Westbroek , a great voice with an ardent but also terribly human projection

    • Eva-Maria Westbroek gives the (false) impression that the role is easy: she is an attractive Marie, by the breadth of her voice, her highs, and her ability to portray a versatile character.

    • Finally, it is with pleasure that Paris sees Eva-Maria Westbroek on her boards. She shows impressive vocal health and even allows herself to bel canto to the most beautiful effect. Accustomed to the role , an excellent actress, she captures each of the aspects of this woman, in a turn serious and adulterous.

    • and above all a Marie who no longer knows who she is or where she is: Eva-Maria Westbroek excels in these roles of women lost in their passions (ah, her Lady Macbeth of Mzensk!), which she embodies with her resonant voice in which we hear real distress.

    • Eva‑Maria Westbroek is an eminently lyrical and sensual Marie, completely immersed in her thirst for life

    • soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek in the role of Marie combines breadth and flexibility of a voice expressing both the humanity of character and her despair. A sublime scene I of act III where she shares with the orchestra the exposition of a fugue with several voices!

    • Eva-Maria Westbroek is the most lyrical Mary of our time, giving a lot of emotion to the biblical verses

    • Eva-Maria Westbroek, who was returning to the Palau de les Arts after her unforgettable Sieglindes de La Valkyrie with Zubin Mehta, filled the character of Marie with strength, impudence, heartbreak, pain, truthfulness, forcefulness and tenderness, whose anguish, pain and misfortune found in the actress who lives in the Dutch soprano the last of her shoe. Her immense performance was in tune with a landmark vocal performance.

  • Wagner - Die Walküre (Sieglinde)

    The Metropolitan Opera
    Mar 2019

    • They are twins — Sieglinde, bittersweetly sung by the soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek, and Siegmund, the leonine tenor Stuart Skelton — separated in childhood. It is their combustible, transgressive love, sparked over that first sip of water, that plants the seeds for the end of a world built on rules, power and greed. Mr. Skelton and Ms. Westbroek were bright stars in a cast led by the blazing soprano Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde. The conductor Philippe Jordan presided over the orchestra, where he whipped up voluptuously sulfurous playing from the Met players.

    • Westbroek also exposed her vocal qualities slowly over the evening, also giving Sieglinde an emotional arc from a vocal perspective. Submissive and gentle in the opening moments, her singing was equally subdued and quiet. If you hadn’t heard the soprano in “La Fanciulla del West” earlier this season, you wouldn’t know how massive her instrument could be. This approach, however, emphasized her perceived weakness and fear, and also made the perfect foil for Gঢ়nther Groissbock’s vicious and loud interpretation as Hunding (his repetitions of “Wölfing” were deliciously condescending). "

    • In the latter role, soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek had to contend at first with her character’s downtrodden state (and drab attire and makeup to match), but blazingly discovered passion with Siegmund by the act’s curtain, and gave anguish full voice during the tragic action that followed. And her triumphant high A’s in Act III, delivered face front, downstage, were the very definition of “Wagnerian.

  • Puccini - La fanciulla del West (Minnie

    The Metropolitan Opera
    Oct 2018

    • But it’s the second half of the Act where Westbroek really stole the show. At the very moment where it is revealed that Ramirez has been lying to her, you could immediately sense the change in Westbroek’s Minnie. The innocent romantic we had seen in the love duet was suddenly gone and in her stead was pure anger. Just watching her body language as she wandered about the stage, trying to control herself and not give her lover away, was pure tension. While the other men were talking and relating their discovery, it was her that your attention was drawn to. When the men leave, Puccini gives Minnie the line “Vieni fuori” in the lower part of her voice and Westbroek filled it with anger, disappointment, bitterness, and pain, her glare growing by the second. And then there was the card scene, where Westbroek battled for her life, throwing off the predatory advances of Rance with aggressive vocal fire, staring him down during their climactic card game; she was his equal every step of the way and you sensed Minnie growing stronger by the minute. The final utterance of “Tre assi e un paio” was pure catharsis as was the powerful stream of sound on “E mio” that closes the act, her voice blasting over the orchestra.

  • Shostakovich - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Katerina)

    The Royal Opera House, London

    • Eva-Maria Westbroek’s Katerina feels even more of a knockout than before. She charts the rise and fall of this modern Lady Macbeth with heightened intensity, from the hunched, empty husk of a woman at the start, through glamorous exultation, to a frightening self-knowledge at her tragic end.

    • Vocally, also, Westbroek was never anything other than totally committed, heart-meltingly smooth in her aria “The foal runs after the filly”, hard-edged and credible in the faster passages. Her voice has a rare quality of projecting to the back of the hall regardless of the volume level employed.

    • Eva-Maria Westbroek brings a hint of Salome to Katerina, without diminishing any of the pathos and beauty of her arias, the first being a yearning call for companionship, the last a greeting to the still, chill waters which will swallow her up.

    • The production, however, hangs on the performance of Eva-Maria Westbroek as Katerina. She sang the role here in 2006; her soprano now sounds even more gloriously incisive and full-bodied, and her interpretation has only deepened. Thanks to her we get to marvel at the way in which in this opera Shostakovich so brazenly and lovingly hands the moral high ground to a murderer, and keeps you rooting for her until the very last note