Soile Isokoski
Mozartian soprano widens her repertoire
BY MARION LIGNANA ROSENBERG [Newsday, 4 May 05]
With a voice at once silvery and dark, compact yet ripe with overtones, soprano Soile Isokoski is in increasing demand as a Wagner and Strauss interpreter. New York so far has heard her primarily in Mozart and French opera, most recently as an achingly poignant Rachel in Halévy’s “La Juive” and as Marguerite in the Metropolitan Opera’s glitzy new staging of Gounod’s “Faust.”
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Soile Isokoski, Zankel Hall, New York
By Martin Bernheimer [Financial Times, 5 May 05]
Soile Isokoski, who chose a remarkably discerning programme for her first New York recital, is no garden-variety primadonna. The soprano from Posio, Finland, is too smart, too self-effacing, too reluctant to follow easy paths to success. Her Metropolitan Opera career began only 15 performances ago, in 2002, as an introspective Countess in Le nozze di Figaro. She returned the following year as a poignant Rachel in La Juive, and last month as a possibly miscast Marguerite in the controversial production of Faust. Gounod’s faux-German heroine — sometimes lyrical, often dramatic, occasionally dazzling — represents a dangerous challenge for Isokoski’s relatively fragile resources, and she ventured the role just a day before her Liederabend. No one could blame her if she seemed a bit tired. Her normally suave tone turned a bit shrill under pressure, especially at the outset, and her diction, especially in German, tended to favour vowels over consonants. In context, however, the flaws seemed minor. She always managed to explore subtext as well as text, sustaining energy even when immersed in subdued reflection. She rose to gentle climaxes with easy radiance. And, unlike many another operatic heroine alone on the concert platform, she avoided any trace of exaggeration, verbal, vocal or histrionic.
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