Category: Nezařazené

A rambunctious Platée revival in Prague

Sensory overload would be an accurate way to describe the revival of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Platée at the State Opera in Prague, though it doesn’t quite capture the visual onslaught of the production. Baroque opera was never so wild… nor such confounding fun.

The title character is an ugly nymph who is led to believe that Jupiter, king of the Roman gods, is smitten with her and coming to her swamp for a tryst. Concocted by Cithéron, an earthly king who has been fending off Platée’s advances, and the god Mercury, the ruse is designed to help Jupiter get his nagging, suspicious wife Juno off his back. Other gods and personified forces like Love and Folly join the deception, which ends with Jupiter and Juno happily reunited and Platée a disillusioned, brokenhearted mess.

All of which would fly apart without a solid cast to anchor the production. Dutch tenor Marcel Beekman held center-stage most of the night playing Platée as a drag queen, the ultimate trouser role (if nymphs wore trousers). His voice was sharp and his tone sardonic, setting the prevailing mood onstage. Tomáš Šelc (Satyr/Cithéron) and Ruairi Bowen (Thespis/Mercury) portrayed persuasive cynical schemers, and Olga Jelinková (Thalia/Folly) was a spitfire, especially once she got hold of Jupiter’s lightning bolt. Lukáš Zeman (Momus), Pavol Kubáň (Jupiter) and Michaela Zajmi (Juno) brought a measure of gravitas to their roles (albeit with tongue firmly in cheek), no small achievement when you’re saddled with silly props like, for example, wearing a cake on your head

(bachtrack.com , By Frank Kuznik, 25 November 2024)

Julietta or Dream – Olga Jelinkova in the role of Julietta

Critics’ attention tends to be focused on the title character Julietta and her male counterpart, the bookseller Michel. Olga Jelínková perfectly fulfilled the idea of this demanding character with her voice and appearance. In the second act, in the forest scene, I admired the meticulous work with the expression, with which she was able to distinguish the drastic changes and moods of the dreamy beautiful girl.

(klasikaplus.cz , Marta Ulrychová)

GIULIO CESARE IN EGITTO – Olga Jelínková as Cleopatra

“In order to describe Olga Jelinková as Cleopatra, one cannot avoid looking at her in her nonchalantly casual, erotically lascivious and childishly naïve play with the cinematic heroines Elizabeth Taylor and Vivien Leigh. If her playing effortlessly stands up to any comparison, her silvery soprano shimmers and shimmers in a league of its own. Her aria Pangero, in which she tearfully mourns her departure from the world if the gods will not help her, is a lesson in vocal art in expression and style. The gods cannot refuse such a request. If only for a short period of time.

In a duet with Mynenko, the two express this hope with wonderful timbre. At the same time, they know that they are finite. They extinguish the candlelight. A great evening, which cannot be praised enough in its overall coherence, is celebrated by the audience with thunderous applause.”

Veni, vidi, vici

The new season of soprano Olga Jelínková features the Queen of the night, La Traviata, Gilda and Lucia di Lammermoor, as well as Wagner

The Czech soprano is fulfilling her dreams. In the upcoming season she will sing the most beautiful roles for her type of voice in Prague (CZ), Leipzig (GE), and Berlin (GE).

“I will open the season with the premiere of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” at the Prague State Opera on September 2. After the spring TV broadcast, I will finally sing Gilda in front of a live audience,” says Olga Jelínková, who received critical acclaim and positive reactions. Later, she will appear as Violetta Valéry in Verdi’s “La Traviata” and as Clorinda in Rossini’s “La Cenerentola”, both at Oper Leipzig. She will perform her most famous role, Queen of the Night (Mozart´s “Die Zauberflöte”) in Prague, Leipzig and at the Komische Oper in Berlin. The pinnacle of the next season for Ms. Jelínková features the demanding title role in Donizetti’s opera “Lucia di Lammermoor” in a production by the Leipzig Opera in the spring of 2022. She is already eager to demonstrate her abilities as a coloratura soprano in the role that all legendary belcanto divas have in their repertoire.

However, there will be other surprises in the artist’s journal, such as a list of Wagnerian roles: “Richard Wagner could write for lighter voices like I have. Leipzig is the birthplace of Richard Wagner, and in the summer of 2022 all thirteen Wagner operas will be staged during three weeks. Gradual, therefore, I will really sing his music, not Isoldas but the roles suitable for my type of voice of course,” says Olga Jelínková who is a steady member of the opera ensemble in Oper Leipzig now after previous engagement in Saarbrücken (GE).

Seen and Heard International Rigoletto TV broadcast review 30.1.2021:
” The two casts are fairly evenly matched, although the one from the first performance gets the nod, chiefly for Olga Jelínková’s Gilda. Vocally and dramatically, Jelínková gave a compelling, finely etched performance. Her musicianship was immaculate, and she is one of those rare singers who fuse coloratura with feeling to create emotions in sound.”

Operaplus.cz review 2.9.2021 premiere State Opera Prague

“Olga Jelínková – the star of the evening, with a beautiful tone and phenomenally certain intonation, enchanted me. Smooth, soft, supportive, confident – other positive adjectives of her singing could be found. In particular, I was fascinated with probably the most technically virulent number “Caro nome” – the heights sung with experience and without exaggerated sweetening. The line between beauty and liking was well drawn. The moment when the critic becomes a spectator drawn into the story is usually a guarantee of a high level of the artist. This moment happened more than once with today’s Guild. Olga Špačková Jelínková is a singer of at least European caliber.”

Olga Jelínková as Gilda in Rigoletto live from the State Opera on 30 January 2021

Verdi’s Rigoletto premieres at the State Opera before Czech TV cameras on Sunday, 30 January from 8 PM.

erdi’s Rigoletto will premiere at the State Opera before Czech TV cameras on Sunday, 30 January from 8 PM, bringing you the opportunity to enjoy the premiere live on ČT art. Thus, the new production of Verdi’s beloved opera will become the first opera premiere of the 2020/21 season and the first opera premiere in the newly restored State Opera building (reopened in January 2020 after three years of repairs).

This time, the piece will be directed by the Czech director Barbora Horáková Joly, who received the prestigious British “Newcomer” International Opera Award 2018, and who currently works for leading European opera houses. The musical side of the production will be prepared by the young and talented Italian conductor Vincenzo Milletarì.

The Spanish-American baritone Daniel Luis de Vicente will sing the title role in the premiere performance. The role of Gilda will be entrusted to the soprano Olga Jelínková. The Chinese tenor Long Long will sing the Duke of Mantua, the mezzosoprano Jana Sýkorová will be Maddalena and the bass Zdeněk Plech will sing Sparafucile. The soloists will be accompanied by the State Opera Chorus and Orchestra.

Tune in on ČT art on 30 January at 8 PM and join us for the first premiere in the reopened State Opera!

Soprano Olga Jelínková joins the Leipzig Opera House

SONGBOK III:Jaroslav Křička

SONGBOOK I: Olga Jelínková & Nathan Blair “Four Songs for the Untold”

Four Songs for the Untold

I. “Lines Written in Early Spring” – 00:12

II. “Words, Wide Night,” For Her – 4:17

III. “Hope,” an Elegy – 10:15

IV. “The Road Not Taken,” a Hymn – 14:51

Music by Nathan Blair

Text by William Wordsworth, Carol Ann Duffy, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost

Soprano: Olga Jelínková Piano: Nathan Blair

SONGBOOK II: Schönberg – Vier Lieder für eine Singstimme und Klavier op. 2

1. Erwartung

2. Jesus bettelt

3. Erhebung

4. Waldsonne

Opus 1 – 3, which Schönberg had published between 1903 and 1904 by the Dreililien Verlag comprise vocal compositions which were all composed probably before 1900 and without being intended as a cyclic collection. They have one thing in common, their dedication to the mentor, friend and brother-in-law Alexander von Zemlinsky: Zemlinsky is the one “to whom I owe most of my knowledge of the technique and the problems of composing,” remarked Schönberg in 1949 in “My Evolution.” It was Zemlinsky who acquainted the autodidact Schönberg with the inner life of the music of Brahms and Wagner, to which also those four songs which Schönberg later gathered under the opus number 2, bear witness. Thus, until around 1897, the composer was specially influenced by Brahms (from whom he learned, as he said himself: “Economy, but at the same time, richness,” and from 1899 increasingly by Wagner (to whom he owed “the ability to turn themes around” by using expanded harmonies). A motival “knotting technique” (Heinrich Schenker) becomes evident with rich chords, thirds and sixths, as well as massive bass octaves brought into the theme structure, by virtually orchestrally employed tremolos or by chromatically altered harmonic connections. Also, Schönberg’s development was significantly stimulated by the literary models for his compositions. In 1897, a year after the publication of Richard Dehmel’s collection of poems “Weib und Welt” (“Woman and World”), the composer set first of all one poem “Mädchenfrühling” (“Maiden’s Spring”) to music; for his three Lieder op. 2 he took three more, and in subsequent years settings for more Dehmel poems and for a text by Johannes Schlaf followed. As Richard Dehmel described the strong impression in December 1912 made by a performance of Schönberg’s “Verklärte Nacht” (“Transfigured Night” also inspired by a poem from “Weib und Welt”), the latter admitted in answer: “Your poems have had a decisive influence on my development as a composer. They were what first made me try to find a new tone in the lyrical mode. Or rather, I found it without even looking, simply by reflecting in music what your poems stirred up in me.” (13 December 1912) In particular Dehmel’s linguistic density in representing colours inspired Schönberg to look for a new “sound.” Very similar to Kandinsky more than ten years later in “Über das Geistige in der Kunst” (“Concerning the Spiritual in Art”), in the poem “Erwartung” (“Expectation”), set by Schönberg as the first song in his cycle, Dehmel, for example describes the “antiethical” colour value red (as “warm and intensive”) and green as (“passive and calm”), black (referring to a “dead oak” – associated by Kandinsky with the stillness of death) and white (in connection with “pale moonlight” – according to Kandinsky as stillness that conceals possibilities for change). Schönberg attempts to reproduce the emotional effect of the thus-described colour values and relations with subtly-coloured sounds, as in the beginning with later-recurring altered appoggiatura chords and their harmonic resolution ornamented by arpeggi. Within the cycle, chords often seem to be freed of any function relative to the tonic; using incomplete cadences, a slowing of the harmonic tempo or repeated chords, the idea of sounds as “structure-forming” colour values (Walter Frisch) is encouraged. At the same time, the setting of the poems to music – similar to Dehmel’s models – is subject to strict, often symmetrical relationships.

https://www.schoenberg.at/index.php/en/joomla-license-3/vier-lieder-fuer-eine-singstimme-und-klavier-op-2-1899

Great success of Olga Jelínková in the role of VIoleta Valléry in Saarbrücken

“Womit wir bei einem weiteren Highlight dieses Opernabends wären – bei der Sopranistin Olga Jelínková. Die Tschechin ist die geborene Violetta: Schön anzuschauen, grazil mit einer perfekten Koloraturstimme und schauspielerischem Talent.”

Mehr hören …:

https://www.sr.de/sr/sr2/themen/musik/20180827_la_traviata_oper_sst_rezension100.html

SR2 KulturRadio, 27.8.2018, Barbara Grech

“Olga Jelinkova ist eine großartige Violetta, dramatisch gefühlvoll, wenn sie ihre aufkeimende Liebe entdeckt („E strano“) mit spielerisch hingeworfenen Koloraturen, wenn sie anschließend („Follie, Delirio vano è questo“) dieses Gefühl als Unsinn erkennt und wieder in den Strudel der Lust zurückkehrt. Eine Traviata zum Niederknien. ”

https://www.saarbruecker-zeitung.de/kultur/staatstheater-in-saarbruecken-zeigt-la-traviata_aid-32168097

Saarbrücker Zeitung, 28.8.2018, Joachim Wollschläger

“Mit Olga Jelínková in der Rolle von Violetta wurde die optimale Besetzung gefunden. In ihrer Verkörperung der Hauptfigur wird die Vielschichtigkeit des Hauptcharakters sehr deutlich. Mit ihrem Schauspiel ist ab der ersten Sekunde klar, dass Violetta mehr als nur eine Frau ist, die ihr Leben genießen und sich dem Luxus hingeben möchte. Sie baut mit den gesellschaftlichen Festen eine Fassade auf, die sie für kurze Zeit von ihrer Einsamkeit entfliehen lässt. In Wahrheit lebt die junge Frau nur für den Tag, aus Angst, sich der wahren Liebe mit all ihren Höhen und Tiefen hingeben zu müssen.”

Alina Fischer, 27. August 2018, für
klassik-begeistert.de

Olga Jelínková
soprano