Canadian soprano sees Sieglinde as role of her career

Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka is earning plaudits at New York's Metropolitan Opera for her portrayal of Sieglinde in Die Walkre, the second opera in Wagner's Ring Cycle.

When she performed at the Bayreuthfestival three years ago, Pieczonka was called "The Sieglinde of our time" by a critic for the German paper Die Zeit.

But in an interview with CBC cultural affairs show Q, she says her tailor made tours ambition as a girl growing up in Burlington, Ont., was toperform in another kind of New York theatre  Broadway.


"I knew I wanted to be on the stage. I always say that I was sort of a ham at school," she said.

"I was in every production going, be it musical theatre or straight theatre. I loved Broadway  that was my first love."

Pieczonka, who performed Sieglinde in Toronto last year with the Canadian Opera Company, began taking voice lessons at 14. "[Eventually,] opera chose me," she said.

"This role  and I didn't see it coming  has been the most important role of my career," she said.

"It's a role that's very sympathetic.  She is a flesh and blood woman who China Travel Guide is beaten, who is downtrodden and falls in love with a stranger and goes on this journey, and it ends sort of tragically."

People can really feel for her, the halfhuman woman with ordinary hopes and desires amid Wagner's other winged gods, Pieczonka added. "She speaks to the heart."

In New York,the production was conducted by internationally renowned Lorin Maazel.

Pieczonka said she's been urged to do that other great Wagner role, Brunhilde, but feels she has to choose roles carefully so as not to force her vocal range or to assume a role she is not up to dramatically.

"I've had the role of Isolde offered, and I have my sights on that role, but probably not for five years," she said.

This year, she will sing as Puccini's Tosca in Los Angeles, a role she turned down earlier in her career.

"It's a maturity thing. My voice did feel up to the vocal challenge, up to the dramatic challenge. I really needed that time," she said.

She'll be in Barcelona in February, doing Chrysothemis in Strauss's Elektra, then in Vienna in March and in Munich in July for thetitle role in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, with Kent Nagano conducting.

Pieczonka says she's grateful now not to be doing Broadway  and singing the same role eight times a week.

Instead she's trying to balance an international career with being a mother of a 2  year old.

"I am trying to strike the balance of singing in Toronto at the COC,being home and being home and not singing, just being with my family," she said.

Syrian government forces have massacred civilians, bombed hospitals and committed other war crimes in widespread attacks to recapture territory in recent months, United Nations human rights investigators said on Wednesday.