Press
The Woman without a Shadow with the Rundfunksinfonieorchester under Vladimir Jurowski
Ricarda Merbeth sings the sexually dissatisfied dyer’s wife who wants to humiliate her husband and is persuaded to sell her shadow, which in the play stands for childbearing ability, to the elf-like empress. Merbeth is perhaps the only singer in the world who manages to wrest a tonal lyricism and a delicacy of diction from this highly dramatic to hysterical role, even in the wildest fortissimo. That is incredible and, in the psycho chaos of Hofmannsthal’s symbolist libretto, also incredibly beautiful.
