Even as she has commanded the stage for the first quarter of this century in memorable performances of the core Italian repertoire, Sondra Radvanovsky hasn’t made many studio recordings. A pair of Verdi albums was released around 2010, and there have been a few DVD releases, but Radvanovsky, it seems, is an artist of the stage, devoted most of all to sharing her voice and art with the lucky audiences who are able to join her live in the house or sometimes on the airwaves or in movie theatres. Perhaps she isn’t interested in creating sterile or overproduced “recital albums,” or perhaps record companies have been reluctant to take on the challenge of trying to capture her considerable voice (big voices are notoriously difficult to record well), or it could be that there are other artistic or market-driven reasons for her relatively few albums. All the more reason, then, to celebrate these two treasures, Donizetti’s Three Queens and Puccini Heroines.
The Three Queens disc captures performances of the final scenes of three Donizetti operas, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereaux, which Radvanovsky presented in a single evening in Chicago in 2019, shortly after singing all three operas during one season at the Metropolitan Opera. As such, they are an important record of an unexpected, brave, and brilliant career decision on her part. She had been increasingly making her name as a Verdi soprano, thanks to her remarkable skill in meeting his challenging demand for sopranos who are both commanding actresses and musically sensitive singers. It seemed that heavier and more demanding Verdi parts might follow, as well as some of the most dramatic soprano roles in the Italian repertoire – perhaps verismo roles like Maddalena in Giordano’s Andrea Chenier or the biggest Puccini roles. Surprisingly, Radvanovsky chose instead to explore the bel canto repertoire – chiefly the works of Bellini (Norma, in particular) and Donizetti. Those are more typically the sorts of roles that lighter-voiced sopranos often grow into (think, for example, of the recent career of Lisette Oropesa). Instead, here was a mature Verdi singer exploring repertoire that might not seem an obvious next step, even if a singer like Maria Callas had demonstrated, by laying claim to such parts, that they had much to offer – and even more to demand of – a singer who could act with the voice.
Radvanovsky has spoken about how demanding bel canto is to sing, but she rises magnificently to the challenge, with her ability to float soft and long lines and her triumphant execution of passages that demand even more power or agility, or (almost contradictorily) both. You can get a taste, here, of the way her voice uncannily imitates the plangency of the English horn with which it entwines in Anna Bolena’s “Al dolce guidami,” or the way it explodes in fireworks and fury in the same opera’s “Coppia iniqua.” In Maria Stuarda, she floats a serene high G over the chorus, before the voice rises to a high B-flat without her taking a breath in Mary’s closing prayer (“Deh! Tu di un’umile preghiera”). In Roberto Deveraux, as Elizabeth I, she bids farewell to her lover and any chance of a happiness on the throne in the supremely demanding and wide-ranging “Vivi, ingrato.” This is regal singing of the highest order.
She followed up that bravura feat with another – in performances in February 2025, she sang arias from almost every one of Puccini’s operas in one evening. Her recent Pentatone disc gives us a seat in the house. Each of the tracks is a single take; no retouching or burnishing in the studio here either. The recital is both a souvenir, a reminder of roles that she is unlikely to return to on the stage again, like Mimi or Musetta in La Bohème, or Manon Lescaut, and a snapshot of where she is now as a singer, with an outstandingly polished and psychologically penetrating performance of “Vissi d’arte” from one of the reigning Toscas of our time.
Plus, it also offers a sneak preview of a role she will be adding to her repertoire in December 2026/January 2027 at the Met – Minnie in La fanciulla del West. On this disc, Radvanovsky isn’t as successful with the roles for lighter-voiced sopranos (the Bohème arias, for example, or the aria from Le Villi) that she has more or less outgrown, vocally. But in the later tracks, including an exquisitely shaded and controlled “Senza mamma” from Suor Angelica, in “Addio, mio dolce amor!” a surprisingly powerful aria from Puccini’s least well-regarded opera, Edgar, and, setting the crown on the entire evening, in Turandot’s “In questa reggia,” she is at the top of her game, and clearly has the audience leaping out of their seats in acknowledgement of her musical and dramatic prowess.
These two albums capture some of the gifts Radvanovsky has lavished on audiences in her years on the operatic stage. They commemorate her fearless embrace of challenges of all sorts and her deep commitment to giving herself fully in her art, both vocally and dramatically. For those who have had the luck to see and hear her in the house, they will be cherished mementos, and for those who are not able to catch her live, they give a glimpse of the electrifying and magnetic force of an utterly honest, direct, dedicated, and imaginative artist.
