Question to Diana Damrau: Are you overhyped?
NewsIn a fascinating interview with Czech conductor Jan Bubák on our partner-site Opera Plus, the German soprano reflects on her social media profile and talks with extreme candour about the experience of vocal injury.
She recommends holistic medical treatment.
‘I won’t play any more crazy, angry women,’ she vows.
Vivid stuff.
Interview of the week.
Full of first-world problems including the traffic in the background.
Overhyped, cold and tricky to empathise with onstage. Next.
To date, I have heard Diana Damrau live on three occasions in recital performances in London (twice at the Wigmore Hall, once at the Barbican Hall), and have found her voice and tone consistently to be supremely versatile, capable of a powerful /forte/, and yet also capable of murmuring in the softest, most velvety whisper where the song calls for it. Even sitting near the back, her projection was so effortlessly magical that it felt like she could have been right next to you. Without hesitation, I would say Damrau is a great singer — one of the greatest that I have heard in live performance.
She is hamming it up a lot lately, and that s rather awful. But she could be a fine soprano. In the past.