Opera Performances & Reviews
Spoleto Festival, ITALY, CARMEN ACT 1 RAI TV
“It isn’t so much that Adria is the best Carmen. It’s that she’s the only Carmen.”
Message sent to Columbia Artists Management following Adria Firestone’s Rome audition with Gian Carlo Menotti for the Spoleto Festival production of Carmen
Carmen: A Definitive Interpretation.
An incredibly rare phenomenon, a singer combining theatrical ability with musical precision. He compares working with her to the exhilaration directors must have felt working with Maria Callas. “It is one of the most extraordinary performances I’ve ever seen”.
– Keith Warner,UK director, quoted in The Australian
The Queen of the Palace of Bellas Artes, Adria Firestone enters the arena… The singer showed herself to be a complete artist; she beautifully adorned the character with her dramatic and vocal gifts… The public gave an ovation to Firestone, who took the afternoon and converted it into the unforgettable.
– El Economista, (E Z Morales) Mexico City
The key to the unfolding of Spoleto’s Carmen is mezzo-soprano Adria Firestone… velvet-voiced, she demonstrated with sure, undulating steps all of the sensuality, cruelty, fragility, knavery and the profound lust for freedom that compose a character both complex and fascinating. The result is that it is . . . .as if she walked right out of the libretto.
– El Pais, Spain
Houston Grand Opera
Carmen Act III
Auckland Opera, New Zealand
Carmen, Act IV
Kentucky Opera Carmen, Act II
Lyric Opera of Queensland, Samson et Dalila, Act II
Lyric Opera of Queensland, Act {
Dalila in Samson et Dalila
"Not only does she have the ravishing good looks and slim figure to suit her for such roles to perfection. . . but she has a powerful, silky smooth mezzo, which she uses with great skill and musicality."
– Opera Opera, Australia
“Adria Firestone’s stunning Dalila dominates the production… A strong stage presence, considerable acting ability, and a fine mezzo voice bring the production vividly to life.”
— The Courier-Mail, Australia
As Dalila, she is the most voluptuous creature imaginable, black waterfalls of hair, flashing eyes, and a, rich voice thrillingly languid, but with an edge of steel. When she sings that famous aria, Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix, her voice curls around Samson like a golden snake.
– The Bulletin, Australia
Amneris in Aida
“Adria Firestone made a glamorous, vocally opulent Amneris, whose performance peaked in a tour de force judgment scene.”
— Opera News
Adria Firestone ihas. . . far and away the best stage presence. Emotional and impetuous, yet thoroughly regal.
– Gazette Telegraph
“Firestone brings life and believable passion… She manages the transition from selfishness to selflessness that makes her repentance and condemnation of ancient Egyptian justice wrenching.”
— Boulder Daily Camera
Opera Theater of the Rockies, Aida, Act II
Utah Opera, Aida, Act IV
Kentucky Opera Cavalleria Rusticana
Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana
“Most extraordinary was the fiery Santuzza of Adria Firestone… she tore up the set, furiously involved, strong enough to dispatch her inadequate Turiddu with the flick of a high note.”
— Opera News
Candelas in El Amor Brujo
“The mezzo-soprano Adria Firestone was a stupendous incarnation of the gypsy character Candelas. Here she showed her excellent dramatic qualities: she recited, danced, and took maximum advantage of the brief time she had to exhibit her beautiful voice. She had her best moment in the "Will-o'-the-wisp."
Diario de las Américas, Miami, Florida
Abuela in La Vide Brave
“Adria also intervened as the Grandmother in La Vida Breve., a totally opposite role to the first, and she handled it with complete mastery."
Diario de las Américas, Miami, Florida
TWO ROLES. ONE EVENING. THIRTY MINUTES TO TRANSFORM.
In a single Manuel de Falla festival performance, Adria Firestone portrayed the fiery Candelas in El amor brujo. During the thirty-minute intermission, she transformed into the elderly Abuela for La vida breve—two radically different characters, physicalities and dramatic worlds.
That's acting.
Florida Grand Opera La Vida Brave
New Works and World Premieres
AcPhoto: ML Hart
San Diego Opera World Premiere, E
Regina Giddens in Marc Blitzstein’s Regina
Adria Firestone as Regina recalls the Elizabeth Taylor of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? An accomplished actress as well as singer, Firestone has a sensuous beauty and intimidating charisma onstage that invite comparison with the legendary older actress. And she has a big, rich, subtly expressive voice that she uses with comparable versatility.
-- Nashville Scene
“Regina voices magnificent malevolence…Firestone’s repellent Regina is particularly watchable.”
— The Tennessean
Doña Francisca de Matos in
The Conquistador
World Premiere · San Diego Opera
Opera by Myron Fink “Adria Firestone…a light in the darkness.”
— San Diego Union-Tribune
“Adria Firestone was especially telling as Luis’s sister.”
— Rodney Milnes, The Times of London
Regina Giddens in Regina, Nashville Opera
(based on The Little Foxes).
Kathryn in Tight-Rope
World Premiere · University of Wisconsin–Madison · 1985
Music by Chester Biscardi · Libretto by Henry Butler
“Adria Firestone, as a gleaming Kathryn.”
— Andrew Porter, The New Yorker
“It was a hit all the way…short in length, but long in psychological power.”
— Wisconsin State Journal
"Adria Firestone sang the loveliest phrases of the night with a warm, dark quality to her voice."
--Wisconsin State Journal
