Euridice
Enter Eurydice sung with pathos and spirit by soprano Lisette Oropesa. She is the company’s feisty prima ballerina. A heated (unsung) argument ensues, climaxing with a vicious slap across the face of her director/husband. She storms out.
First generation Cuban American soprano Lisette Oropesa played the part of Eurydice with grace and beauty, her voice blending sweetly with Mironov’s in the delicious duets of Act III.
Orfeo ed Euridice
Lisette Oropesa as Eurydice is lovely, both vocally and in her graceful ghost-like paces through the land of the dead. Dressed in a beautiful white wedding gown, we're riveted to her presence whenever she’s on stage.
Lisette Oropesa ... brings worthy vocal opulence to Eurydice.
His Eurydice is appropriately feisty, questioning and a convincing match in the competent embrace of soprano Lisette Oropesa. The pearlescent finesse and expressive intent of Eurydice’s thoughts and words drawn in voice, to both find comfort in and counter Orpheus’s presence, become a vital and compelling force, highlighted in duet with Mironov with marvellously complimentary singing and acting.
Dressed in white with a billowing cape as the deceased Eurydice, Lisette Oropesa looked and moved like one of the dancers. Her sounds were liquid silver and she seemed to be an amazingly graceful creature from another world. She sang through a veil at times, but it never marred the focus of her sound. My only thought was that her part was too short.
Her face covered in a sheer white bridal veil, Oropesa moved across the stage like a phantom presence, her silvery voice hinting at an almost timeless sense of melancholy. In her simple gestures, the soprano managed to look at ease among all the ballet dancers swirling around her.
Clad mostly in a wedding dress, Oropesa brings resilient strength to the calamity looming over Eurydice, mobilizing her roaring coloratura that is equal parts lilting and honeydew-like. The most noteworthy instance of this is when Oropesa’s Eurydice painstakingly mourns her predicament of an ostensibly unloving husband in Act III (via the duet “Vieni, appaga il tuo consorte” / “Viens, suis un époux qui t’adore” and her solo aria “Che fiero momento” / “Fortune ennemie”), singing out with fervid, heart-wrenching pain that is as powerful as it is pleasant. Not to mention, Oropesa adeptly sings simultaneously while performing some choreography with the Joffrey Ballet, moving with a lithe light-footedness that impeccably befits her apparitional character.
Lisette Oropesa‘s first appearance in the fields of Elysium took many by surprise as she had some fairly detailed choreography that involved quite a bit of sprinting about the stage and manipulating an extremely long silk cloak. She accomplished all with a dancer’s grace and precision. Accordingly, when she opened her mouth and began to sing there was a quiet ripple of surprise in the theater.
Oropesa dazzled with a crystalline tone and even support from top to bottom. She rendered grace notes with ease, sang a tender line, and brought a beautiful elegance to Eurydice’s despairing ”Fortune ennemie” in the last act. She returns to us in May for Verdi’s Gilda and I for one am looking forward to it.
Lisette Oropesa was a lovely and determined Eurydice, caressing every vocal line with a delicacy underpinned with sensuality.
Orpheus’s beloved wife Eurydice is soprano Lisette Oropesa, whose sumptuous voice is one I want to hear again and again. Luckily she is scheduled to return to LA Opera in May as Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto. She makes an amazing Eurydice and moves so beautifully that she appears to be one of the dancers instead of an opera diva.
Lisette Oropesa’s Eurydice was exquisite
Soprano Lisette Oropesa’s Eurydice (aka ballerina) managed a few leaps and port de bras like a trouper but really shone in her radiant singing in Act II and floated some gorgeous high notes above the trio in Act III.