Sara Fulgoni

Mezzo-Soprano

Biography

British-Italian mezzo Sara Fulgoni, ‘the fiercest Fricka…in the last 50 years’ (Michael Tanner, The Spectator) has performed at the major opera and concert venues of the world in a huge variety of repertoire, all to critical acclaim. The full, rich and lustrous quality of her voice, as well as her remarkable stage presence, have distinguished her operatic performances. Recent and forthcoming performances include Mistress Quickly Falstaff at Grange Park Opera; Marfa Khovanshchina and The Mother Il Prigioniero for Welsh National Opera; Zita Gianni Schicchi on film for Grange Park Opera; Auntie Peter Grimes and Duchess of York in Batistelli’s Richard III at Teatro La Fenice; Beroe in Hans Werner Henze’s Die Bassariden with Orquesta Nacional de España in Madrid under Kent Nagano and at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma; Mahler Symphony No.3 under Andrew Litton with the Bergen Philharmonic; Brangäne Tristan und Isolde at Grange Park Opera; Forester’s Wife The Cunning Little Vixen at La Monnaie/De Munt; and Fricka Die Walküre for Grange Park Opera’s inaugural season at West Horsley Place.

Named ‘the Carmen of the decade’ by the Daily Telegraph, Sara Fulgoni has sung much of the great mezzo repertoire. She has sung the role for Santa Fe Opera, Toulouse (under Michel Plasson), the Palau de les Arts Valencia (under Lorin Maazel), Grand Théâtre de Genève, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera and at the Beijing Music Festival, where she became the first western interpreter of the role to be presented in the capital of China since the Cultural Revolution.

Now adding more dramatic roles to her broad repertoire, notable appearances include Waltraute Götterdämmerung with De Vlaamse Opera and English National Opera; Kundry Parsifal for Welsh National Opera conducted by Vladimir Jurowski; Judith Bluebeard’s Castle with the Canadian Opera Company, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse and Welsh National Opera; the Sorceress Dido And Aeneas at La Scala and the Royal Opera House under Christopher Hogwood (Opus Arte DVD); Maddalena Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House, La Monnaie, Opera National du Rhin and English National Opera; Penelope Il Ritorno d’Ulisse In Patria with the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Royal Danish Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève and Welsh National Opera; Juno in Semele at Opernhaus Zürich and De Vlaamse Opera; and Baba the Turk in The Rake’s Progress in Rome with Daniele Gatti and at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna.

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Reviews

“Sara Fulgoni’s Mistress Quickly – all luscious voice and twinkling eyes”

Falstaff, Grange Park Opera 2021

Alexandra Coghlan

iNews

“For at the heart of Pountney’s interpretation is the fine mezzo Sara Fulgoni as a fraudulent sorceress Ulrica, here in cahoots with Riccardo’s page Oscar. If this Ulrica were alive today, she’d probably be running her own doom-mongering TV channel.” 

Un ballo in maschera, Welsh National Opera, 2019

British Theatre Guide

“…Sara Fulgoni’s majestic Ulrica – an almost automatic presence in every scene, incidentally.  Fulgoni’s Ulrica was drawn on a grand vocal scale.”

Un ballo in maschera, WNO 2019

Opera Now

“Sara Fulgoni’s grandly-toned Ulrica – the fortune teller who subsequently announces Riccardo’s unalterable fate – is already a presence, as she will be throughout the show rather than in the single scene envisaged by the composer”

Un ballo in maschera, Welsh National Opera 2019

Financial Times

“The magnificent Sara Fulgoni brings a Kundry-like physicality to the liminal, shadowy role of Marfa…sounding completely at ease in the lower register which Mussorgsky mercilessly exploits, she’s mesmerising in the long incantation-scene…she’s as compelling in stillness and silence as when pouring forth imprecations and invocations.”

Khovanshchina, WNO 2017

Katherine Cooper

Bachtrack

“…the fiercest Fricka I have seen in the last 50 years, Sara Fulgoni, whose demolition of the god’s view that he wasn’t responsible for how his children behaved achieved cosmic force.”

Die Walküre, Grange Park Opera, 2017

Michael Tanner

The Spectator

More Reviews

Peter Grimes, Teatro alla Fenice 2022

“Sara Fulgoni is very incisive, present and well-defined, with a technically good voice and beautiful colour”

Opera Libera

“The vocal and acting performance of all the other members of the cast is very good … an expressive Sara Fulgoni in the role of Auntie”

Gli Amici della Musica

Gianni Schicchi, Grange Park Opera, 2022

“Rinuccio’s larger-than-life aunt, sung with great gusto by Sara Fulgoni”

Londongrip.co.uk

Un ballo in maschera, 2019, Welsh National Opera

“There was fine work, too, from Sara Fulgoni, as the gypsy Ulrica, always around to lend her predictions a nudge in the right direction”

Bachtrack

“Sara Fulgoni’s Ulrica, a stirring take on the fortune teller, who communicates with the devil is another brief, yet brilliant handling of the character.”

TheSprout

“…presided over by Sara Fulgoni’s majestic Ulrica – an almost automatic presence in every scene, incidentally… Fulgoni’s Ulrica was drawn on a grand vocal scale”

OPERA Now

“Sara Fulgoni (Mistress Quickly) as her characterful accomplice.”

Fiona Maddocks The Guardian

“Sara Fulgoni’s Mistress Quickly – all luscious voice and twinkling eyes”

Alexandra Coghlan i News

“Sara Fulgoni’s Quickly is much more than the usual go-between. In fact she saucily ventures into Falstaff’s bed.”

Richard Morrison The Times

“A mother (a magnificent Sara Fulgoni) sings of her pain, building to a harrowing scream amplified by orchestra and offstage chorus, and sending us tumbling into terror.”

Rebecca Franks The Times

“the tormented despair of Sara Fulgoni’s The Mother…the Mother nurses her grief in stillness. It’s as focused as desperation itself.”

Nigel Jarrett Wales Arts Review

“While the archetypal lamenting mother, Sara Fulgoni – vividly reflecting extremes of anguish – was a presence almost throughout”

Rian Evans The Guardian

The Prisoner had opened with a fine impassioned account of the Prologue by Sara Fulgoni – singing about as well as I have ever heard her.”

Glyn Pursglove Seen and Heard International

“Sara Fulgoni’s Zita throwing themselves into their parts with such gusto that they almost seem to spin off the screen.”

Music OMH

“Luigi Dallapiccola’s one-act The Prisoner from 1949 opened with Sara Fulgoni grieving powerfully over her son’s imprisonment. Beautifully accompanied by a Mahler-sized BBC National Orchestra of Wales (not the WNO home team on this occasion) under Lothar Koenigs, this was one of the high points of the evening, with the lightly written score creating subtle and emotionally intense pairings.”

Lucien Jenkins, The Critics’ Circle

“A mother (a magnificent Sara Fulgoni) sings of her pain, building to a harrowing scream amplified by orchestra and offstage chorus, and sending us tumbling into terror.”

Rebecca Franks, The Times

“…the tormented despair of Sara Fulgoni’s The Mother…the Mother nurses her grief in stillness. It’s as focused as desperation itself.”

Nigel Jarrett, Wales Arts Review

“Sara Fulgoni as The Mother, gets an impassioned scene of mania, visiting her son in the prison. Fulgoni makes this opening moment, with her blockbuster high register, petrified by a vision of King Phillip of Spain, transforming into a symbol of death.”

The Sprout

“Sara Fulgoni works up some suitably histrionic outbursts as Marfa, the Mystic Meg of 17th-century Muscovy.”

Richard Morrison, The Times

“Marfa (Sara Fulgoni) glides crazily, prophetically between factions”

Steph Power, Independent

“the women were led by Sara Fulgoni, magnificent as Marfa”

Brian Dickie

“the sinuous voice of Sara Fulgoni showing excellent vocal quality over a wide range of registers.”

Mark Ronan

“…surely Sara Fulgoni’s Fricka must be the most indignant portrayal there has ever been…As hinted at above, Sara Fulgoni’s resplendently sung Fricka was total convincing in its dramatic detail and her long ‘conversation’ with Wotan never seemed half as long as it sometimes can.”

Jim Pritchard, Seen and Heard International

“Sara Fulgoni more vivid still as a blazing Fricka, who sets about Wotan in a memorable encounter over the breakfast table.”

Richard Fairman, Financial Times

” In a quite superb portrayal, Sara Fulgoni, done up in Lincoln green like the formidable W.I. Monster Fricka might have been, relishes the compelling narrowness  of this unlovely character.”

Richard Ely, Bachtrack

“Sara Fulgoni sings and acts magnificently as Fricka in a handsome, tailored riding habit”

Peter Reed, Classical Source

Sara Fulgoni was implacable and agonised as Brangäne.”

Fiona Maddocks, The Guardian

“Sara Fulgoni is a superb Brangäne with a rich and sumptuous mezzo-soprano”

Sam Smith, Music OMH

“Sara Fulgoni was an outstanding Brangane”

Katerina Yannouli, Plays To See

“Sara Fulgoni seemed to have the technique and security needed for Isolde and the radiance of her top notes was what was sometimes lacking from Rachel Nicholls. Ms Fulgoni also compellingly conveyed the weight of her character’s sense of responsibility for the lovers’ sufferings.”

Jim Pritchard, Seen and Heard International

“Welcoming the presence of Sara Fulgoni that fits well into the company in the role of the nurse Beroe, and take home a great scene with Elgr / Dionysus, begging him to save Pentheus (Spare him, Dionysus)”

Michelangelo Pecoraro, Opera Click

“A ravishing outing for a rare Schoenberg… featuring mezzo Sara Fulgoni. Her rich tone, especially in the chest range, offered an engagingly different aural perspective, the words often more sung than spoken, the dark timbre of her voice was perfect in Nacht and its expressionistic gloom. And after its rapport with Alice Neary’s cello, the gentle rocking of the boat taking Pierrot back to his native Bergamo had an understated beauty, with the work as a whole realising both intimacy and a remarkable intensity”

Rian Evans, The Guardian

“Sara Fulgoni’s luxurious performance of Dalila, fatal seduction oozing out of her beautiful mezzo. Her singing caressed the life out of Samson in ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’, and her portrayal as a corrupt consort… was sharply directed.”

Peter Reed, Classical Source

“Sara Fulgoni sounds darkly seductive and at the same time possesses the regal air of the film star she is meant to be. She builds up the tension and expectations very well with long phrasing, before pulling out all the lyrical stops in the famous aria and subsequent duet ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix’.”

ACGE

“Sara Fulgoni seizes the possibilities of the wily Dalila – one of opera’s great seductresses”

George Hall, The Guardian

“…partnered as Dalila by mezzo Sara Fulgoni sounding its notes with confidence, warmth and a genuinely seductive quality.”

Opera News

“Much better the mezzo-soprano Sara Fulgoni, the warm voice and technically solid, stands out for its expressiveness and the acting abilities especially in the singing of the mother, one of the most beautiful and intense of the whole work”

GB Opera Magazine

“Highly expressive, with an excellent technical mastery, was the mezzo soprano Sara Fulgoni”

Opera Gazet

“Sara Fulgoni has a remarkable sense of drama and plays her character emotionally and vehemently, passionately too. She has the right tone of voice for Judit, the drama too.”

Gil Pressnitzer, Culture 31

“Sexy and alluring”

Concert Classic

“Particularly Sara Fulgoni , Emilia of a great emotional intensity..”

GB Opera Magazine

“Fulgoni’s Beatrice is robustly characterised and her voice is as well-nourished as her wit. And we certainly feel the heat of that strange fire within her as she rises to the demands of both pride and ardour in her great Act II scene.”

Welsh National Opera

“Sara Fulgoni as Polina seized her moment in her one atmospheric aria and produced gorgeous, effortless low mezzo sound – this was a lollipop in the score if ever there was one.”

Musical Criticism

“Sara Fulgoni was in fine voice as Béatrice, especially impressive in ‘Dieu! Que viens-je de’entendre’, a piece in which ones feels the shadow of another of Berlioz’s heroes Gluck.”

Seen and Heard International

“To start with Brangaene, I do not think I have ever heard Sara Fulgoni act and sing anything better. Expressive in face and voice, she produced a gorgeously rich mezzo that rode effortlessly over the orchestra, especially in the decisive lower register.”

Musical Criticism

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Becky Farrell - General Management

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