Reviews

Strauss Gala, Tivoli Copenhagen

WORLDSTAR sang grand music of Richard Strauss. Ann Petersen went into the different extracts from the various Strauss operas ( Rosenkavalier, Frau ohne Schatten, Arabella, Ariadne and Salome) with body, soul, acting and everything. She has all the light and strength in the voice and the completely right, beautiful and big Strauss-sound to this task. She was as always fabulous and confirmed that she is a worldstar!

Politiken 17. june 2019

Tristan und Isolde, “ La Monnaie”

Ann Petersen war eine kraftvolle, charismatische und leidenschaftliche Isolde, die mit ihrem leutenden Sopran der Partie in jeder Hinsicht gerecht wurde und sowohl musikalish als auch szenisch überzeugte. Beeindruckend war von der unteren bis zur exponierten Lage das der dänischen Sängerin zur Verfügung stehende Klangspektrum.

Opernglas 7. August 2019

A superb cast who bring tremendous musical individuality and integrity to their performances. Ann Petersen is a resolute, focused Isolde, vocally generous to the very end!

Opera Now, July 2019

The production enjoys a cast of very high level, dominated by the Isolde, Ann Petersen. Grandios in stature and in voice, the danish soprano familiar with the great Wagnerian and Straussian roles delivers here a remarkable performance, dominating the role without any weakness, with an assurance and a professionalism that are impressive, giving a lot of character, which at times becomes almost terrifying.

Forum Opera 5. May 2019

Ann Petersen is impeccable as Isolde, having all the technical requirements for this role.

Broadway World 5. May 2019

Parsifal, 2. act in concert at The Royal Opera Copenhagen

It was such a big pleasure to hear Ann Petersen sing the part as Kundry. Although it was her role debût, she was feeling at home, and she sang it beautifully and secure.

Information, 12 february 2019

Turandot, The Royal Opera Copenhagen

Ann Petersen sings the legendary difficult part as Turandot irreproachable.

Kulturkupeen, 4 february 2019

After her succés in Pucinnis “La fanciulla del West”, Ann Petersen adds another certain stone to her impressive career path, with a Turandot made of flesh and blood.

Politiken 22 january 2019

Fanciulla del West / Puccini / The Royal Opera Copenhagen

The Danish Soprano is shining throughout the evening! As Minnie, with the gun in the back pocket, Ann Petersen steered throughout the whole evening as a true Heroine. Her voice and physics are perfect for the demanding main part as Minnie in this Puccini Opera.

Politiken 11. november 2017

Tristan und Isolde / Opera de Lyon

Ich bewundere, wie großartig Ann Petersen die monströse Partie bewältigt, mit leicht kehligem Timbre und jungen, schlanken Höhen, trotz des nötigen Wumms in der Stimme,- und wie sie inständig versucht, nicht Waltraud Meier zu spielen, sondern Isolde.

Die Zeit 23. March 2017

Ann Petersen is a remarkable Isolde, with subtle shudder, with a superb projection and capable also a wonderful piani, communicating an intense emotion throughout the work until its last apparition in Liebestod.

Forumopera 21. March 2017

The danish soprano Ann Petersen is already in the great tradition of the singers, who have sung the part as Isolde during the last few decades. The strenghts of the voice is considerable: richness of timbre, flexibility of the line, not to mention an impressive vocal power. Never altering the continuity of the phrase to approach a particularly difficult note, it evolves with incredible ease in this murderous tessitura, never saving itself to reach the Liebestod with a freshness, legato and radiation intact.

Opera-online France 21. March 2017

Salome / The Royal Opera / Copenhagen

Ann Petersen is a wonderful Salome, who can sing the demanding part without any problems, as R. Strauss demands.

Politiken 19. april 2016

With glittering voice on each tone, Marilyn Monroe-wig and purposeful body language, the soprano Ann Petersen lifts the Salome character to cosmic heights.

Jyllandsposten 19. april 2016

Tristan und Isolde / Megaron / Athen

Ann Petersen as Isolde, – a true discovery! Nuanced, lyrical, but still with ability to the big moving dramatic outbursts, that never slipped from her, she created an oppressive and multifaceted character study. Particularly text course, came the highly dramatic story of Morolds death and the oath of vengeance, and also a wonderful “Liebestod” at the end, even after a long lasting performance.

Das Opernglas 28. january 2015

Die Frau ohne Schatten / The Royal Opera / Copenhagen

Ann Petersen is the Empress in Die Frau ohne Schatten. Ethereal, melancholy and obliging, and with a delicate appearance and sparkling singing.

Weekend Avisen 11. september 2015

Der Rosenkavalier, Staatsoper Wien 16. december 2015

Ann petersen ist eine anbetungswürdige Marschallin im Besitz aller stimmlichen und darstellerischen Ausdrucksmittel, eine Meisterin der Nuancen und Zwischentöne mit einem piano, das Steine zum Schmelzen bringen könnte. Ihr grosser Zeitmonolog im 1. Akt ist der Höhepunkt des Abends.

www.woche.at, december 2015

Die dänische Wagner- und Strauss-Spezialistin Ann Petersen überzeugte auf Anhieb und verstand es bereits in ihrer ersten Vorstellung, mit der Akustik des Hauses umzugehen. Die zarten Piani waren bis zur letzten Reihe Galerie einwandfrei hörbar, die kräftige, warme Stimme klang nie scharf und setzte sich im finalen Terzett- gemeinsam mit Oktavian und Sophie- gegen die orchestralen Klangwogen erfolgreich durch.

Online Merker, 2015

Tannhäuser / Conducted by Daniel Barenboim / Staatsoper / Berlin

Ann Petersen offered a beautifully sung, properly human Elisabeth; we seem, let us be thankful, to have moved decisively away from the days of the blandly virginal. Moreover, her way with Wagners words delved for deeper than anything we saw on stage.

The Boulezian 5. april 2015

Ann Petersen as the virginal Elisabeth, splendid in an Ava Gardner- style satin gown, showed the intelligence and strong- mindedness of a role that can seem merely prudish.

The Observer 19. april 2014

We first see Ann Petersen’s Elisabeth as a Grace Kelly lookalike, in a white ball gown, against a background of golden-lit poles. The singing is superlative. Complements for Petersen’s lyrical Elisabeth. Ann Petersen as Elisabeth, knows how to touch. She acts with great passion and sings with a wealth of nuances.

Berliner Morgenpost 14. april 2014

The most touching moments are provided by the Dane, Ann Petersen, with her warm soprano, as the loving and desperate Elisabeth. Ann Petersen as Elisabeth, looks like a blond Grace Kelly beauty, and she lures with angelic tones.

Der Standard 23. april 2014

The pretty Danish soprano Ann Petersen, fits the type forth in this role, and makes the conflict between the Purity Pray and the adults longing for pleasurable love theatrically very clear. Her soprano is floating and brings delicate and emotive piani tones. Online Merker16. april 2014 Ann Petersen shines in her first appearance- aria “Dich teure Halle”, with radiant Soprano, who has also in the hights above, a wide understanding of the text.

Online Musik Magazin 17. april 2014

Otello / The Royal Opera / Copenhagen

The Soprano Ann Petersen is Desdemona. Extremely beautiful in her white dress and with a voice, which should be able to lay all the shadows of the devil down. It is her first part at the Royal Opera in the ensemble, at a point where she is unsurpassed at the worldstage as Wagner’s Isolde.

Weekendavisen 27. september 2013

Ann Petersen is filling out the part as Desdemona with her glittering silver voice and bodily primitive force. Right now the name Ann Petersen is on everybody’s lips. As well as here in Denmark she sings the big Wagner parts abroad, but also the poesi and drama of Verdi lies ideal for her lyric voice and expressive appearance.

Jyllands-Posten

These years the big Operahouses in Europe are asking for Ann Petersen, because of her effortless talent for singing the heavy dramatically parts by Wagner. Now she is a touching and beautiful Desdemona by Verdi. The director’s idea of placing this passive woman in the front of the scene at the very beginning of the opera, which makes her the main person of the tragedie, is difficult to explain, but nevertheless it works in this staging, because the audience then at once becomes aware of this unusual singer, who captures the stage in the last act with her international class and with the lightness and strength of her voice. On bare feet she took the audience with storm and got the deserved applause.

Politiken 23. september 2013

Wagner Gala / DR Koncerthuset / Copenhagen

It was soprano Ann Petersen, who was the sensational item. Ann Petersen stood on a podium behind the orchestra and was brilliant looking and also sang with great wing span. Ann Petersen again stood on the withdrawn podium, now in a new robe as Brynhilde, and manifested the great final scene. Ann Petersen possess what it takes to triumph in such a party. Her declamation is sovereign, the sound is solid and egal, she has brawn, she has in her height a visual authority, and finally Ann Petersen radiates a spiritual peace in the unfolding of her art of singing, as the old champion up in his heaven must welcome. In this way, he perhaps got one of his best birthday gifts.

Valdemar Lønsted / Information

At the back of the stage the Danish soprano Ann Petersen rised in her apple green gala dress. The tall woman sang with a bright, silvery voice her declaration of love to the dying Tristan and her own happy farewell with the earthly world of “Isolde Liebestod “. Ann Petersen is specialized in the great Wagner solo passages. She is touring at the world’s great opera houses and sings regularly in Denmark too. Last Summer she gave star lustre to “Tristan and Isolde” at the Danish National Opera”.

Christine Christiansen / Jyllandsposten

With the world soprano Ann Petersen as the luminous center of the evening, DR gave Wagner that format of a birthday party which the great opera master deserves […] DR had secured one of the leading Wagner sopranos in these years, Ann Petersen,as a soloist. High above on her podium behind the orchestra, she sang the final scene from ‘Tristan and Isolde’, so the clear balanced light in her voice reached out to everyone in the approximate sold-out hall.Together with Swedish Nina Stemme the female Dane is the one the opera houses are asking for right now for their dramatic Wagner repertoire,and not just Isolde’s ‘Liebestod’ but also with Brünnhilde’s demanding removal of ‘Götterdämmerung’ the soprano in her burning red dress gave the audience further experience with its sovereign controlled, stylish Wagner art…Ann Petersen is built to sing this music, and she is in a brilliant shape. Wise enough not to overexpose.Not even when she with fire flaming at the top of the course was millimeters from being drowned in violent euphony.

Thomas Michelsen / Politiken 7. september 2013

Lohengrin / La Scala / Conducted by Daniel Barenboim

Ann Petersen, a Danish soprano filling in for an ailing Anja Harteros, was floating with lovely phrases in her Second-act song to the air, “Euch lüften”, and singing with warmth and intensity in the fateful scene with Lohengrin (song by Jonas Kaufmann).

Mike Silverman / 2012

Tristan und Isolde / Danish National Opera

We experience the inextinguishable throughout the performance live in the soprano Ann Petersen’s sublime flaming Isolde. Dazzling smiling in the death of disdain and thirst, she lifts with her splendour voice the Irish princess from the hatefulness in the 1 act through the 2 act’s big lovescene until she ends the 3 act in pulverizing harmony.

Weekendavisen 24. august 2012

Our own Ann Petersen was the greatest surprise of the evening. She has already sung the part as Isolde abroad and with big success. Who has ever truly heard the meeting with Tristan in the 1 act being sung more pure, and have you ever cried so realistic during the famous “Liebestod”? This was Ann Petersen as Isolde.”

Berlingske 22. august 2012

Ann Petersen was the magnetic centre among the singers. She was impressive and was carrying the audience away by her control of the Isolde figure. Ann P. is able to move on the stage, tell a story, argue and command as a master singer in her authoritative speech of art, and she manage to hold all the big emotions of the drama with a nearly incomprehensible credibility. The last 8 minutes of the opera, “Liebestod”, is still vibrating in the heart many hours later.

Information 21. august 2012

Ann Petersen is a worldclass Isolde. Nuances, precision, strenght and lightness. The voice had it all, and after nearly 5 hours opera it was a “Liebestod”, one of the biggest, the dramatic soprano was giving us, while she was leaning over the body of Tristan. Singing Isolde is the same as driving 3 laps of Tour de France in a row on the same day, but Ann Petersen has the energy and strenghts it requires.

Politiken 21. august 2012

Tristan und Isolde / Millenium Centre / Cardiff

Generally speaking the music reaches the standards set by WNO at ist best. Danish soprano Ann Pedersen is the production’s star by some margin and with an already established profile in Wagner and Strauss, she seems set for an enduring and distinguished career. Hers is not a full-blown dramatic soprano voice: she sings a mix of lyric and dramatic roles and it will be interesting to watch the choices she makes in the future, but there is an easy flexibility to her sound throughout ist whole compass that adds enormously to the intrinsic beauty of her singing. She acts well too and provided a fine foil to Ben Heppner throughout the whole performance.

Lyn Kenny / seenandheard-international.com 22. may 2012

The Danish soprano, Ann Pedersen, with her long auburn tresses, looks and sounds like a young woman lost in love – not, for once, like a diva. Her voice rings out ripe and effortlessly: she shapes her character and her fate in sentient detail, carries Heppner with her in duet, and unleashes her Liebestod with total freedom and wonderful instinct.

Hilary Finch / The Times 22. may 2012

Die Frau ohne Schatten / The Royal Opera

What do we hear and see? An opera artist with an aura and charisma as a walking angel. A shining softness, natural calm, endowed with a voice, which carries over land as was it nodes from the Swans of the fairytale poet H.C. Andersen, with a placement of high nodes delivered so effortless as needles on a map, a high D up there on the scale where only Gods and the chosen people are allowed to travel. But Ann Petersen is just letting this high D shine from the peak! What a debut!

GregersDH / Blog Archive 2012

Tristan und Isolde / Welsh National Opera

When the curtain does go up, […], we’re treated to half an hour of some of the most beautiful Wagner singing I can remember, […]. Ann Petersen is immediately perfection as Isolde, and mostly she stays that way. Hers is a lighter, more lyrical voice than the conventional Wagner soprano, and she floats Isolde’s lines as if they were Schubert, lovely and effortless, though with ample power when needed, hardly ever sounding forced. One might sit back, shut one’s eyes and simply listen. But one would miss a great deal, because this is a Wagnerian who can act, with presence and total engagement, and she even looks the part. When Brangaene enquires: “Who could see Isolde and not die happy?” for once one doesn’t wince at the irony. Above all, Petersen knows how to carry her looks into the role; her Isolde is a creature who loves and who one can imagine loving, something that in this work usually has to be supplied by the imagination.

2012

Tristan und Isolde / Lyon / Conducted by Kirill Petrenko

Ann Petersen beeindruckt mit einem von Beginn an engagierten Auftritt als betrogene Irenkönigin, den sie mit ihrem ausdrucksstarken, jugendlich dramatischen Sopran bei guter Phrasierung und emphatischer Mimik untermauert. Ihre Höhen kommen kräftig, ohne heldisch zu klingen. Sie ist eine junge, fast forsche, jedenfalls intensiv erlebende Isolde, die auch am Ende noch stimmliche Reserven hat, um einen berührenden Liebestod zu singen.

Der Neue Merker 17. june 2011

Ann Petersen als Isolde liegt mit ihrem glasigen, später hell kristallinen Sopran perfekt auf der lichttherapeutischen Wellenlänge Petrenkos.

Die Welt 9. june 2011

Ann Petersen’s first Isolde is youthful and fresh but every bit the spurned princess. There is no edge to her voice, no shrieking for effect, simply gorgeous singing throughout. A revelation!

Financial Times 7. june 2012

L’Isolde d’Ann Petersen est, au contraire, une prise de rôle. La jeune soprano danoise ( qui fut la Freia de L’Or du Rhin a l’Opera Bastille en 2010) s’y révéle d’emblée étonnante de natural, avec sa silhouette de belle grande femme à Karita Mattila et ses cheveux coupés courts à la Waltraud Meier. Phrasé souple, ductilité coloriste de la voix, facilité de projection sur toute la tessiture, indéniable presence scénique, la Danoise a tout pour etre l’une des grandes Isolde de demain. La scéne finale ( le fameux Liebestod ou Mort d’Isolde), particulierement sensuelle et incarnée, tranche avec l’habituel et élégiaque chant d’extase de cette “mort d’amour” mystique et pacifiée.

Le Monde 7. june 2011

Die tote Stadt / Danish National Opera

Ann Petersen´s Marietta is tremendous melodious safe and effortless,-almost sumptuous.

Weekendavisen 20. august 2010

Nevertheless, – the queen of the night is Ann Petersen in the role as Marietta! She sings better and better for every minute. The red hair looks better for every minute. Does she sometimes act a little too beautiful, or maybe not enough decadent? Only until she gathers the gentlemen around her sofa…exactly like that was the art in the time of the expressionism, and then, when her face is transmitted onto half of the wall in the background, then…first you maybe think ”oh no, how vulgar can it be!” But her light vibrating eyelids conquer everything!

Berlingske Tidende 20. august 2010

Ann Petersen, with her Wagnerian-Soprano, made her debút as Marietta very beautiful. Ann P. has to dance erotically, show her long naked wriggled legs, as well as, which is the most difficult thing, sing a varied and vocally very demanding role. But although the tall woman is not a dancer, she manages to carry the performance totally right to the very end,…and the song of Marietta in the first act was beautiful, drown out in the most candy like sound in co-operating with the experienced conductor!

Politiken 20. august 2010

Fidelio “1805” / Komische Oper Berlin

Den Fidelio singt Ann Petersen auf den dramatischen Höhepunkten der Partie sehr gut: Eine Sopranistin mit Herz und Stimme. Beliner Morgenpost2010 Wie ein Geist der vergangenheit aus der gerade abzuwickelnden Theater- und Ideenwelt erscheint Fidelio/ Leonore, bravourös gesungen von Ann Petersen.

Märkische Oderzeitung 2010