SorayaMafi

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Soprano
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  • Britten A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Glyndebourne Festival
    Jul 2023

    • She wore the Fairy Queen's extravagant high-Baroque frock (designed for Ileana Cotrubas in 1981) with imperious authority, and sang Tytania's glittering coloratura with a diamantine edge, suggesting a tougher cookie - she was defiant in her refusal to hand over the challenging boy to Tim Mead's Oberon - yet melting amorously into the arms of Bottom-as-an-Ass (Brandon Cedel).

      • Hugh Canning, Opera Today
      • 22 July 2023

  • Mozart Mitridate, re di Ponto

    Garsington Opera
    Jun 2023

  • Handel In the Realms of Sorrow

    London Handel Festival
    Feb 2023

    • Singing with a lovely fluency, light agility and sure sense of style, soprano Soraya Mafi was a despairing Hero, discovering her lover drowned, tearing out her hair, and then joining him in the dark waters. Mafi’s strong tone and expressive nuance, and her graceful partnership with Baker, made the torments of this mythic heroine very ‘real’ and pressing.

  • Mozart Le nozze di Figaro

    Glyndebourne on Tour
    Oct 2022

    • Mozart’s divine comedy stands or falls by its Susanna. Soraya Mafi, a rapidly rising star, is perfection, diction clear, manner funny and sharp, voice at ease in all the role’s demands. Catch this Figaro if you can.

    • The star of the evening, for me, was Soraya Mafi as Susanna: her performance was witty, pert, alert, vocally crystalline and precise, and utterly captivating. Mafi had to wait a long while for her own ‘big number’ but Act 4’s ‘Deh vieni’ was very much worth the wait. Both Williams and Mafi rose above Grandage’s comic innuendo and restored Mozart’s grace.

    • Mozart’s divine comedy thrives or falters by its Susanna and Mafi was in perfect voice as she handled with apparent ease the many demands of the role, balancing emotion and performance throughout with great comic touches, and I look forward to seeing what she does next.

  • Handel Alcina

    Glyndebourne Festival Opera
    Jul 2022

    • Another debut – long overdue – is made by the British soprano Soraya Mafi, whose dazzlingly bright and agile coloratura excited audiences across Britain for several seasons before Covid. She steals the show as Alcina’s scheming sister Morgana: flirtatious, vindictive and deliciously flighty. Her entrance in a mermaid suit is outrageous; her vivacious account of the aria Tornami a vagheggiar simply a showstopper.

    • As Morgana, Soraya Mafi sparkled in ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’, dancing evenly and crisply through the dazzling decorations, while ‘Credete al mio dolore’ was poised and expressive, its elegance aided by a lovely cello obbligato.

    • Soraya Mafi, as Morgana, gets the hit aria “Tornami a vagheggiar” and makes a sparkling job of it...

    • The singer who stole the show was Soraya Mafi, whose Act I ‘Tornami a vagheggiar’ was the evening’s clear highlight, dripping with character, and with Mafi and the band in clear resonance. Mafi lights up the stage with her infectious vivacity; she somehow manages to match that with vocal agility and pinpoint pitching.

    • The most ebullient of these choreographed arias is delivered by the superb Soraya Mafi as Alcina’s sister Morgana: a showstopping Tornami a vagheggiar that’s danced and sung, incongruously but brilliantly...

    • Soraya Mafi copes athletically with her extortionate coloratura: she sounds as if she’s having a great time.

  • Mozart Così fan tutte

    English National Opera
    Mar 2022

    • Best are Soraya Mafi’s world-weary chambermaid Despina (her accents as dizzying as her disguises), all sardonic sparkle and cynicism, and [Neal] Davies’ scheming rogue of an Alfonso.

    • Bass-baritone Neal Davies is wonderfully entertaining in this not always attractive role, larging it in a mustard Zoot, and much aided by soprano Soraya Mafi as multi-talented Despina, laughter bubbling through her nimble voice. Here Despina is a chambermaid at the Skyline Motel, and Mafi does a marvellous turn as a line-dancing sheriff presiding over an on-the-spot wedding.

    • ...the most memorable moment...came when Despina, played with impressive and infectious humour throughout by Soraya Mafi, performed a cowboy dance with the two dwarfs while singing a Mozart aria.

  • Gilbert & Sullivan The Mikado

    English National Opera
    Oct 2018

    • Soraya Mafi is effortlessly optimistic as Yum-Yum, allowing the voice to soar in The Sun, Whose Rays.

    • Soraya Mafi was very appealing as the sassy – if rather fickle and somewhat vain – schoolgirl Yum-Yum who Nanki-Poo is in love with. Her Act II aria ‘The sun whose rays are all ablaze’ was exquisite...The couple’s mock-romantic duet in the first act (‘Were you not to Ko-Ko plighted’) – when Nanki-Poo and Yum-Yum think about flirting even though it is against the law – was an absolute delight.

    • As bride-to-be Yum-Yum, soprano Soraya Mafi is as delightful as ever...

  • Verdi Rigoletto

    Seattle Opera
    Aug 2019

    • It is up to the Gilda of Soraya Mafi to shoulder the weight of this production... When she is on stage, her tiny post-adolescent figure and adorably open face fix our attention utterly, and when she sings we rise with her. I have never heard a more perfectly phrased “Caro nome,” but her every note and moment are equally simple, moving and right.

  • Humperdinck Hänsel und Gretel

    Grange Park Opera
    Jun 2019

    • the main pleasure comes from the singers of the title roles: Soraya Mafi, beautifully silvery of voice as Gretel.

    • The children, played by Soraya Mafi and the Australian mezzo Caitlin Hulcup, sound terrific as the mischievous pair, and sing exquisitely.

    • Caitlin Hulcup and Soraya Mafi were quite simply the most visually plausible Hansel and Gretel I have ever seen, boisterous anarchic children of the sort that always land in trouble and wangle their way out of it. Their singing was perfection – Hulcup all boyish bravado, Mafi mercurial and sparkling.

    • Soraya Mafi’s Gretel was lustrous and sweet, rising to soaring lyrical heights in the virtuosic passages of Act 3.

    • With her silvery, flexible soprano, Mafi steers Gretel just short of soubrette delight, and Hulcup’s lovely mezzo expresses any amount of adolescent diffidence, courage and affection. Hulcup is a head taller than Mafi, which puts the finishing touch to their credibility as brother and sister, and throughout they are immensely affecting and strongly directed.

    • Soraya Mafi and Caitlin Hulcup made a delightful pairing as Gretel and Hansel, for all the picturesque charm of the characters' depiction there was a fundamental seriousness to their performance which emphasised the music's quality. Mafi was a poised Gretel, shaping the lovely melodies carefully and expressively, and she was matched by Hulcup's wonderfully boyish Hansel (one of the best 'boys' I have seen in this opera for a long time), with the two voices blending and contrasting. They kept the action moving so that the scenes between them in the first two acts, which can sometimes drag somewhat, flew by.