Role Reviews
Dupprels is surrounded and supported by terrific colleagues - notably Rosalind Plowright as her twisted yet remorseful aunt in Suor Angelica. Rupert Christiansen - Daily Telegraph - 3 June 2015
The opera reaches a tremendous climax with her showdown with Rosalind Plowright’s guilt-ridden Princess Neil Fisher - The Times - June 2015
Rosalind Plowright still glamorously formidable as the Princess in the second (opera) Richard Fairman - Financial Times - June 2015
...Rosalind Plowright's towering, imperious and forcefully-sung Zia Principessa. Hugo Shirley - Opera Magazine - July 2015
The singing is mostly decent, but ….Rosalind Plowright’s unusually nuanced Zia Principessa, …… would all grace grander establishments. Hugh Canning - Sunday Times - June 2015
Other singers to stand out were a vehement, Rosalind Plowright as La Zia Principessa, nobler than the convent hierarchy, but possessed of similar, ruthless, yet perhaps ultimately more conflicted coldness. Mark Berry - operatoday.com - June 2015
Rosalind Plowright provided another veteran masterclass to the younger generation of singers. The voice is still big and opulent, and her stage-presence commanding. Steve Silverman - Opera Britannia - June 2015
Rosalind Plowright, singing with a wonderfully controlled legato, revealed La Zia Principessa’s more forgiving side, though it was heavily concealed below a tyrannical insistence on discipline and submission. Claire Seymour - seenandheardinternational - June 2015
Rosalind Plowright’s cleverly conflicted portrayal of the aunt completed this powerful confrontation. She looked wonderful in her 1940s’ tailored twinset, matched by the hauteur and authority of her singing, and the two artists really sparked off each other. …. the Duprels-Plowright showdown and the closing scene were musically and dramatically so strong as to more than make up for (the missing miracle). Peter Reed - classicalsource.com - June 2015
Rosalind Plowright puts in a typically stunning performance as La Zia Principessa and her scene with Suor Angelica is highly poignant, Sam Smith - musicomh.com - June 2015
Suor Angelica is notable for the searing psychological plausibility of its central confrontation between the wary Aunt of crimson-clad Rosalind Plowright David Gutman - The Stage - June 2015
It doesn't hurt that an imperious Rosalind Plowright spars so fiercely with her as La Zia Principessa — a worldly, wealthy and entitled figure ... Mark Valencia - whatsonstage.com - June 2015
It helped that in Rosalind Plowright she had an opponent who was equally subtle and strong. Rosalind Plowright's La Zia Principessa was less the martinet and more troubled than some depictions, making her interestingly conflicted with a moment when she almost approaches Angelica, but always within a rigidly controlled discipline. Robert Hugill - Planet Hugill - June 2015
Fortunately, Rosalind Plowright's steely and steady Zia had the grace and gravitas to make this work. Indeed, Plowright's surprising touch of sympathy and humanity at her exit was a refreshing gesture of real pathos, a tangible moment of intimacy from which the rest of the evening could well have benefited. Theodore Deacon - Opera Magazine - August 2013
Rosalind Plowright plays the pious aunt with bone-hard conviction and holier-than-thou righteousness. With acting skills to match her instrument, Plowright comes up with the best performance I’ve seen at Seattle Opera this year. Roger van Oosten - The Sun Break - 7th May, 2013
The role of the Principessa is short but crucial. Mezzo-soprano Rosalind Plowright, who as a soprano in times past sang a much acclaimed Angelica, has under 10 minutes to delineate this character. In this production, directed by Bernard Uzan, she is dressed all in black with a large silver crucifix on her breast, stiff and walking with a stick, but a tall and uncompromising figure. Her distaste for coming is only overcome by her need to get the document signed, but it is clear in the physical distance she maintains from her niece, her refusal to allow any closeness, her fierce dismissal of forgiveness. The only humanity she shows is in the long silence before she reluctantly tells of the child’s death and the warring elements she displays when Angelica collapses at the news. Pride, not compassion, wins. Plowright is superb as actress as well as singer. Her lowest notes are amazing for a singer who used to be soprano, and the quality is still strong after over 30 years on worldwide stages. Philippa Kiraly - City Arts - 6th May 2013
Rosalind Plowright was superbly effective and as a morally haughty yet physically weak aunt, who cringed just a bit, but still extracted the signature that she needed from her niece. James Bash - Oregon Music News - 11 May 2013
At the other extreme, veteran Rosalind Plowright could not have been more exciting vocally or dramatically. In what could have been a one-note role as the cruel aunt of Sister Angelica, this great English artist employed all of her extraordinary gifts (as well as excellent make-up and costume) to create an image of frightening power, made all the more effective by contrast to her apparent physical frailty. Tall, gaunt, and regally straight-backed, Plowright amazed with the perfect control and size of her voice. With no hint of wobble (so often found in older singers with big voices), her voice thrilled me, most particularly with its perfectly produced chest voice. One regretted that hers was such a short presence on stage. Rod Parke - Seattle Gay News - 10th May 2013
As for the Princess, she is usually played, Plowright observed in an interview in the program book, “as the cold, hard aunt out for one thing, her niece’s signature [to give up any claim to family money].” Plowright sees in her “a much more terrified and vulnerable woman, dreading this encounter, knowing that she will have to tell her niece what happened to her son. There is much humanity in this part of the role and a real sense of regret and sadness.” And it was Plowright’s signal achievement, along with her superb singing, and without the slightest diminution of regal dignity, to bring that more nuanced view of the Princess compellingly to life. Not that the lady becomes a completely sympathetic character—that would run counter to the course of the scene—but it was good to be able to see some redeeming good in her, against a background of the cruel oppression of women in the supposed name of Catholic morality. Bernard Jacobson - Seen and Heard International - 9 May 2013
As the dreaded, ice-hearted Principessa, mezzo Rosalind Plowright is a stunning figure, as rigid and formal as Lorca’s Bernarda Alba and terrifying in her calculated cruelty. Plowright brings even more to the role, though, suggesting the character’s obsession with the memory of her sister (Angelica’s dead mother). Thomas May - Crosscut.com - 8 May 2013
The bearer of the bad news, Angelica’s malevolent aunt (whom author William Berger calls “perhaps the single biggest bitch in all opera”), is sung by Rosalind Plowright, who specializes in villainesses and plays her like a black-clad ice sculpture. Gavin Borchert - Seattle News Weekly - 7 May 2013
Not surprisingly, the great Rosalind Plowright is an utterly riveting Princess, the cruelly unforgiving aunt who wreaks havoc when she visits the erring Angelica in the convent after ignoring her for seven years. Melinda Bargreen - Seattle Times - 6 May 2013
