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Critical Acclaim | Features
Puccini’s Edgar in concert at Frankfurt Opera (Fidelia)
“In Frankfurt it was a festival of voices which was celebrated by the audience at the end with standing ovations. The soprano Angela Meade (Fidelia) demonstrated subtly tinted, restrained passion onstage.” — Frankfurter Rundschau, Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich (February 2014)
“Angela Meade (Fidelia) seemed to be in her element. She offered vocal showpieces ennobled by poetic elegance, marveled with a distinctive soprano timbre and with flexible, emotionally charged accents. She also combined both naive and dramatic gestures in her splendid shaping of the role. … This unusually substantial evening of opera may well go down in the annals of the house. — Der Neue Merker, Gerhard Hoffmann (February 2014)
“The soprano Angela Meade caused the highlights of the concert. Her unwavering commitment to Edgar in the final act developed an irresistible suggestiveness and created a cosmos of love amid an atmosphere of hatred.” — Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, Benedikt Stegemann (February 2014)
“Angela Meade presented a stunning a performance. (…) Puccini has written three great arias for Fidelia. Meade sang it with great devotion and knew how to portion her energy well. She also has an extremely powerful, persistent voice, which she added an expressive intimacy to even in the most dramatic passages.” — Kurturfreak, Markus Gründig (February 2014)
“The American soprano Angela Meade demonstrated the most impressive gentle moments of the concert, foreshadowing wisely in her arias the precise characterizations in Puccini’s later works.” — Allegemeine Zeitung Mainz, Axel Zibulski (February 2014)
“…Angela Meade as Fidelia sings powerfully yet shows sensitive and girlish textures…” — Frankfurter Neue Presse, Andreas Bomba (February 2014)
Falstaff at the Metropolitan Opera (Alice Ford)
“The soprano Angela Meade, fresh from an enormous success as Bellini’s “Norma” at the Met, is a plush-voiced, wise Alice Ford.”
— The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini (December 2013)
“The cast was generally terrific, particularly Angela Meade as the leading ‘wife,’ Alice Ford. Her full lyric soprano darted and swooped, with trills and high C’s neatly in place.”
— New York Observer, James Jorden (December 2013)
Norma at the Metropolitan Opera (Norma)
Old Gods Awaken
“ Angela Meade and Jamie Barton both delivered tremendous performances in last night’s Norma at the Met, causing some old-school pandemonium in the house. Meade sang with a degree of dramatic involvement that I hadn’t yet seen from this greatly gifted soprano. … By the end she had taken full, fiery command of the stage. … To see these young artists reveling together in their voices makes you believe unswervingly in the future of the art.”
— The Rest Is Noise, New Yorker critic Alex Ross (October 2013)
I Vepres siciliennes at Caramoor (Hélène)
“As he often does, Crutchfield assembled an excellent cast of singers, headlined by soprano Angela Meade, who was nothing short of extraordinary as Hélène. Meade commanded the stage with a regal presence, brimming with confidence in her opening aria in Act I, spitting with defiance in her Act IV duet with Henri, and spinning out a smooth legato in the Act II duet with Henri. She had the vocal power, unflagging through a long evening, to soar above ensembles like the Act IV quartet, while holding back enough suavity to give the ‘Sicilienne’ in the last act a light and airy character, all the way up to the fizzy high C-sharps, after perfectly floating the high, soft parts of her Act IV cavatine.”
— The Classical Review, Charles T. Downey (July 2013)
Don Giovanni at Cincinnati Opera (Donna Anna)
“The most memorable debut was made by Angela Meade, who as Donna Anna conveyed a range from grief to anguish while soaring radiantly through the most demanding arias. She might be forgiven for becoming a tad shrill when she unleashed the full power of her voice, which was considerable. Her sound was truly remarkable. As she knelt, she floated meltingly beautiful high notes in Donna Anna’s second act recitative and aria, ‘Crudele! . . . Non mi dir,’ in one of the evening’s most stunning moments.”
— Cincinnati Enquirer, Janelle Gelfand (June 2013)
Norma at Washington National Opera (Norma)
“Of the four Normas I’ve heard live in the last ten years, Angela Meade is by far the best.”
— Washington Post “Classical Beat”, Anne Midgette (March 2013)
“When you’ve got two vocal powerhouses like Meade and Zajick, the production doesn’t really matter … you had two women on stage who really know how to sing. …The Act I Norma-Adalgisa scene culminates in the quintessential dueling-sopranos duet (Zajick is a mezzo, but Bellini didn’t necessarily see the role that way), which involves both women repeating the same music, each going up to a high C: Meade offered a stunning, floating pianissimo, and Zajick sweetly responded with another one, which she held out even longer. Opera singing is partly an athletic feat; healthy competition can motivate great performances, and I’d venture that the energy between Meade and Zajick helped them both step it up a notch.”
— Washington Post, Anne Midgette (March 2013)
Il Trovatore at the Metropolitan Opera (Leonora)
“Angela Meade, a rising star at the Metropolitan Opera, rose a notch higher as she stepped into one of the touchstone roles of the soprano repertory, Leonora in Verdi’s ‘Il Trovatore.’ … The young American demonstrated once again that she has all the gifts to be an outstanding spinto soprano — a category between the lighter lyric and the heavier dramatic voice. She filled the house with ample, gleaming tone, and rose to all the technical challenges of the role: Runs, trills and high pianissimos were executed with agility and confidence.”
— Associated Press, Mike Silverman (January 2013)
Verdi Requiem with Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Seguin
“This October 21 concert had a last minute change that will go down as a ‘were you there the day’ occasion. It was announced that soprano Angela Meade (an Academy of Vocal Arts alum) would fill in for Marina Poplavskaya, who performed in the two previous concerts but was bowing out for the last owing to allergies. Meade, who filled in famously at the Met two years ago, stepped in with a flawless and electrifying performance. She made the ending of the ‘Libera Me’ passionate, sonic, and supple; and she was utterly one with the chorus. It was a moment of vocal gold.”
— American Record Guide, Lewis Whittington (January/February 2013)
R. Strauss’s Four Last Songs in Toronto
“[Marco Parisotto] also didn’t hold back with the Strauss Lieder, pushing Meade to blow our hair backwards with her great, big voice. … She displayed all the ingredients of a great operatic singer, including a solid grasp of the dramatic arc of each piece. Although the Strauss songs are operatic in their sweep, the audience was given the opportunity to jump roaring to its feet with a Verdi encore: ‘Pace, pace…’ from La forza del destino.”
— Musical Toronto, John Terauds (January 2013)
Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda at Carnegie Hall
“On Wednesday at Carnegie Hall, some of America’s most talented young singers — including soprano Angela Meade and mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton — delivered vocal splendor with technical fireworks in Vincenzo Bellini’s ‘Beatrice di Tenda.’ They followed in the musical footsteps of the late Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne, who wowed a Carnegie audience in the same 19th-century Italian opera in 1961. Meade and Barton produced a stream of thrilling, seductive sounds. And they drew a standing ovation from an audience that included top agents, publicists and casting directors in the music business. … The soprano’s full-throttle voice is exhilarating. And her rise to stardom at the Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere is well deserved; she’s won more than 50 vocal competitions.”
— Associated Press, Verena Dobnik (December 2012)