KarenCargill

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Mezzo-Soprano
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News

  • 14 September 2023

    A trio of Requiems for Karen Cargill

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  • 04 July 2023

    Nicola Benedetti CBE and Karen Cargill to perform at Scottish Coronation

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  • 30 November 2022

    Karen Cargill joins Askonas Holt

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Press

  • Bluebeard's Castle (Judith)

    Boston Symphony Orchestra with Karina Canellakis
    Feb 2024

    • Cargill was full and rich at the top…she nailed her high C at the opening of the fifth door, and she was touching when Judith tells Bluebeard “Hallgass, hallgass, itt vagyok még” (“Look! Look! I’m still here”) even as he’s assimilating her.

    • Karen Cargill brought similarly admirable dramatic instincts to Judith…she charted Judith’s journey from lovesick young bride to Bluebeard’s latest resigned casualty with intense fervor.

    • Karen Cargill, led the way with some gleaming high notes and a steely lower register…the mezzo brought fire to her character’s demand for the final door to be opened.

    • Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill made a dramatically savvy and vocally powerful Judith, hues of innocence, curiosity, love, and despair flickering across her face as well as her voice. Her repeated intonations of “Szeretlek” (“I love you”) sounded achingly sincere.

  • Verdi Requiem

    Metropolitan Opera with Yannick Nézet-Séguin
    Sep 2023

    • Leah Hawkins and Karen Cargill were simply superb, and especially effective when singing together. It is amazing that two such dissimilar voices could blend so perfectly...Cargill’s voice is a remarkable column of sound that is even from top to bottom. It has a presence that was as impressive in the bold proclamation of the “Liber scriptus,” as it was soaring so beautifully in the moving “Lux aeterna.”

    • Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill’s vocal qualities were well-matched with Polenzani’s, the pair sounding natural together even though Cargill is a dramatic mezzo and Polenzani a lyric tenor. The alignment mostly resided in the smooth, brassy sound. Cargill, a Grammy nominee, has performed in multiple Wagner operas, and there’s little wonder why. She has serious power and a broad range that dives deep and soars high with equal firmness, making her voice a velvet hammer.

    • The mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill and the soprano Leah Hawkins, soloists in the Requiem, admirably held together their own exposed singing in the “Agnus Dei,” ...the “Recordare” duet, in which Cargill and Hawkins closely collaborated as musical partners while offering distinct interpretations: Cargill, pitiful, prayerful, humbled; Hawkins, persuasive in recounting the beauty of Jesus’ sacrifice.

  • Dialogues des Carmélites (Mère Marie)

    BBC Proms with Robin Ticciati
    Aug 2023

    • Karen Cargill as Mother Marie sang with magnificent body and force, ringing true and clear.

    • Mother Marie began as simply a rather forbidding figure, but charged by the dying Old Prioress to watch over Blanche, her role increased and she almost dominated the second half. Karen Cargill combined a mesmerising stage presence with a superb feel for the music, this was a highly charged yet intensely controlled performance where physical presence, text and phrasing combined. Cargill brought a richly expressive phrasing to every sculpted utterance, yet she was expressive throughout as she has a very speaking countenance, whatever was going on this Mother Marie was reacting to it. And as the second half developed, you felt the way Cargill showed that Mother Marie's faith really burned. In many ways, Mother Marie is the engine of the whole opera, and Cargill did not disappoint bringing a sense of power and intensity to the role, always there yet never dominating.

    • Karen Cargill played Mother Marie with a pragmatic warmth and generosity...

    • ...Karen Cargill’s strong voice filled the hall to perfection.

    • Matthew’s psychological realism was more than matched by Karen Cargill as Mother Marie of the Incarnation. Cargill had intense dramatic and vocal presence, and the imposing breadth and depth of her mezzo conveyed every atom of fierce maternal love and defiance. Negotiating the high, angular lines with absolute assurance, Cargill made us feel the emotive power of Mother Marie’s expressions of spiritual commitment, the high standards she inspired as she pressed her sisters to take the vow of martyrdom. This only made her own guilt, as a survivor, more poignant.

  • Dialogues des Carmélites (Mère Marie)

    Glyndebourne Festival with Robin Ticciati
    Jun 2023

    • First the music: with a star lineup that included Karen Cargill as a sympathetic Mother Marie, voice resonant with meaning and gradation...the ensemble of nuns was sharply characterised.

    • Karen Cargill was a deeply affecting Mère Marie, her cavernous mezzo-soprano rich and agile at the top. In Cargill’s empathetic Marie we saw a maternal warmth to her sisters and a fearsome defiance to the mob in Act 2. Her survivor’s guilt, aching and sorrowful, was plangently depicted.

    • Karen Cargill made a splendid Mother Marie, who must hold things together after the death of the old Prioress...

    • Karen Cargill’s Mère Marie tussles and prowls like a wounded animal...Karen Cargill had a similarly raw and desperate quality to her voice, and was unafraid of finding guttural – even rough – parts of her volcanic mezzo, especially in the intense final sequences of the opera.

    • ★★★★ Karen Cargill’s Mother Marie is vocally ferocious...

    • Déployant un lyrisme bouleversant, Karen Cargill incarne une Mère Marie de l’Incarnation à l’autorité fulgurante, mais aussi très humaine. Deploying a moving lyricism, Karen Cargill embodies a Mother Mary of the Incarnation with dazzling authority, but also very human.

  • La Damnation de Faust (Marguerite)

    London Philharmonic Orchestra & Edward Gardner
    Feb 2023

    • Karen Cargill sang Marguerite with a moving plangency; her mezzo-soprano has the quality of Baileys: thick and creamy, decidedly warming. With some clean higher notes and clear articulation, she made her sweetly sung “D'amour l'ardente flamme” one of the evening’s highlights.

  • Suor Angelica (La Zia Principessa)

    Scottish Opera & Stuart Stratford
    Mar 2023

    • It turns out to be the Aunt of Suor Angelica, Karen Cargill, implacable in a raspberry suit. It is an outstanding performance, leaving the audience with the lurking thought that she is villainous enough to tell her niece the child has died just to stop the questions, and thoughtless of the consequences.

    • At the centre of the plot is the entry of Karen Cargill’s Princess, who presents a comprehensive portrayal of the evil aunt wishing to take away Angelica’s inheritance while telling of Angelica’s dead son. Rather than a sentimental portrayal this is a terribly realistic dramatisation of humanity’s wickedness.

    • Daily convent life makes for a slow burn in Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica) until Karen Cargill, as the Princess, makes her commanding entrance and delivers bad news to her niece Angelica...

    • There was a lively ensemble of workaday nuns, but the stand-out was Karen Cargill as the aunt, giving an immense performance, a study in raw cruelty.