Angela Meade's Glorious Anna Bolena at the Met Opera

Comparisons to Joan Sutherland

By: Susan Hall - 10/25/2011

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Angela Meade is a great young bel canto singer. Her voice rivals Joan Sutherland’s.

Young tenor Stephen Costello was Meade’s Percy. Their career trajectory has been similar, both students at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia and students of the great teacher Bill Schuman.

To be joined in death, but until then....

Anna Bolena
Metropolitan Opera
New York
October 24, 2011

Angela Meade has assumed the role of Anna in Gaetono Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at the Metropolian Opera. She undertakes a role that uber star Anna Netrebko opened in. Perhaps because Meade is one of the world’s great bel canto sopranos, she is brave and gutsy in her role selection. Comparisons with Netrebko are inevitable because they sing during the same season and the same role. If you love the human voice, Meade’s is the performance to treasure.

Meade entranced Tanglewood audiences in her performance of arias from Norma and Verdi’s I Lombardi at last summer’s opening concert in July. The year before she had made an indelible mark at Caramoor in a full concert production of Norma.

Meade inarguably has one of the great bel canto voices of our time. Her vocal line may sound easy, but only because she has great gifts. She is seamlessly flexible and smooth even when she is executing ornate embellishments. Her lines are full of feeling and settle naturally into an emotional story arc.

As listeners respond to the details of her singing, we note stunning dynamic control. Meade often sings her highest notes with a house-numbing quiet, the light tone in the higher registers one of the marks of the bel canto style. Meade’s tone remains rich, her attacks clean and her diction perfect.

The supporting cast is terrific. Stephen Costello gets better with each outing, and in this break through year performs also at Covent Garden as Alfredo in La Traviata and then on to L’elisir d’amore at the Vienna State Opera. He has a ringing tone and a poignant lyricism that compliments Meade perfectly. His stand alone arias were riveting.

Only one more performance at the Met on Friday, October 28th.

Look for Meade in the Met HD performance of Ernani in the spring. She will be at Caramoor next summer in concert.

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Reader Comments

From "Susan Hall"

10-26-2011, 04:26 pm

Thank you for writing. Wolfe and Silverman were at Friday's performance. I covered Monday's. Word is that she really settled in on Monday. She is young, but has a great voice, just as Radvonosky has a great voice. On any given day they give a more inspired or more challenged performance, don't you think? I am glad to return to first principles, which have gotten sadly distorted at the Met. In the opera beginning... is the voice. I prefer big, beautiful voices. Pretty women with small voices do not interest me, but because the Met is a launching pad for HDs, we keep seeing performers who can't sing. So much to talk about. Please report back on Radvanovsky's Norma!

From "Ted Heslin"

10-26-2011, 03:35 pm

nothing more than my amused dual impression offered up here. don't know how much time you have for personal opinions of others (non critics). susan's opera reviews i always enjoy and find myself often in agreement with. i just like the way she writes. so i was excited by her review of angela meade in bolena. next i turned to youtube to hear meade's casta diva from caramoor. i felt it was nice, but found to my ear, few if any of the qualities of sutherland and the other beloved norma's of the past 50 years. i then read some of the youtube comments- one should really spare oneself of that- but was not surprised to find a range of opinions about her that covered the charts (several of them quite unkind and unnecessary). i was next entertained by the other two reviews i read of meade's bolena from the met. zachary woolfe for the n.y. times and mike silverman in the s.f. chronicle for ap. their impressions differed enough from each other and susan hall's as to cause me to, yet again, marvel at how we humans can come away from the same performance with such a range of opinions leading me to wonder if we all viewed the same show. criticism is often so self serving. third thought of the morning. i wondered how the soprano i do so enjoy, sondra radvanovsky, will fare as norma when she debuts the role in oviedo spain in december. since berkshire fine arts will not be there, i must go. i wish her well in this next endeavor. also i look forward to hearing her debut in the role of anna bolena down the road. in fact she says she'll sing all 3 of the donizetti queens in a single season. i presume that will be at the met in a couple or few years. but just because i love her voice, i know there is no guarantee i will love sondra's norma or bolena. thanks for the job you do and all your publication offers.