Liudmyla Monastyrska

Soprano

Biography

Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska is acclaimed for her lush, powerful, compelling performances and superb technical command. Her relationships with European, American and Asian opera houses have continued to expand following her highly acclaimed 2010 debut with Deutsche Oper Berlin in the title role of Puccini’s Tosca.

Future engagements include among others Turandot at Staatsoper Berlin, Abigail in Nabucco and Tosca at Metropolitan Opera in New York, soprano part in Verdi’s Requiem with Orchestre National de Lyon, Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, Abigail at Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich.

Current engagements include debut in the role of Turandot at Metropolitan Opera in New York, venue debut as Aida at Arena di Verona, return as Amelia in Un ballo in Maschera at Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, Leonora in La forza del destino at Teatro Regio in Parma, Aida at Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Abigail in Nabucco at ROH Covent Garden, Verdi’s Macbeth (role of Lady Macbeth) at Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, three concert of Verdi Gala at Staatsoper Berlin, Leonora in La forza del destino at Deutsche Oper Berlin among others.

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“Abigaille is a killer of a role – a kind of heldensoprano – with some soft, beautiful singing called for along with the blistering high notes. Soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska, in the had the chops for the two aspects of the part… Her sotto voce was done with elegance and style and she certainly had the notes for some of the role’s most terrifying aspects, including the blaring music that has killed many a soprano taking on this role…It was good to see and hear the opera again, and certainly worth attending for Monastyrska’s performance alone.”

Richard Sasanow

Broadway World

“The vocal star of this season premiere performance was Liudmyla Monastyrska, reprising her 2016 turn as Nabucco’s illegitimate elder daughter Abigaille, the vengeful usurper who connives to seize her father’s throne. Her weighty but agile dramatic soprano superbly navigated her character’s fioriture as she mostly stood and delivered blazing fistfuls of sound. For the more intimate moments, such as her radiant prayer to the god of Israel in the opera’s final bars, where, dying after having taken poison, she successfully reined in her voice and delivered a persuasive pianissimo.”

Susan Stempleski

Bachtrack

“The role of Abigaille is a voice buster. Returning to the role at the Met, Liudmyla Monastyrska surmounts the role’s hurdles with reasonable ease. And… she was especially effective in the closing scene of the opera when all is lost and she commits suicide. The fierce warrior princess was gone, and a gentler woman emerged with a shimmering, beautiful voice to match. Met audiences don’t often get to hear Monastyrska in a role with this kind of range.”

Rick Perdian

New York Classical Review

Reviews

“The main woman role, sung by Liudmyla Monastyrska, exhibits a big voice, of fine color, placed at the service of a tormented character… The best moment seemed to us the performance of what Verdi in the score significantly defines ‘melody’, or ‘Pace, mio Dio…’, characterized by a remarkable expressive intensity…”

Fabio Larovere

Conessi all'Opera

“For this opening of the Festival, the cast is international and starry. In the Leonora role, the Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska (very popular and become a spokesperson for peace at this time of war in her homeland) offers a performance invested both vocally and dramatically. The voice is powerful and backed with a great emission… Accuracy is immutable and assured at both ends of its range. It flourishes musically in the less dramatic places, such as its elegantly nuanced and touching final aria…”

Par Vojin Jaglicic

Olyrix

“There is a great axes of romantic melodrama with all their intensity: passion, revenge and despair, in a framework of violence and destruction… We cannot forget it today, as the Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska reminded us just by her presence. Great aria in the final act, with its desperate and repeated invocations to peace (Pace, pace…), beautifully sung, reminded us of the universal character of Verdi’s music, giving meaning to a work that is often not understood.”

Víctor Sánchez

Scherzo

“Scenically more credible is undoubtedly Leonora – Ukrainian Liudmyla Monastyrska, who conquers the Regio hall for a conscious immersion in the character, as well as for a luxuriant, flowing, warm, smooth voice in a well-extended and always homogeneous range. She is ready to deliver us a “Pace, pace…” from her intense, astral vagueness.”

Gilberto Mitton

Teatro.It

“In Parma the role of Leonora was taken by the Kyiv-born soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska, and it was impossible not to be moved by a Ukrainian artist beseeching God for peace, as Leonora does in her famous act IV aria Pace, pace mio Dio. With lustrous tone, emotionally intense vibrato, and thrillingly climactic high notes, Monastyrska was a charismatic vocal presence, perhaps especially in her long duet with the Padre Guardiano, the guardian priest of a monastery, sung by the resonantly solemn Croatian basso Marko Mimica. The chorus of monks then assembled for the prayer La vergine degli angeli, with Monastyrska raptly taking up their melody. In no other opera does Verdi—not a particularly pious Catholic—give such expression to Marian devotion.”

Larry Wolff

The New York Review

“The evening was dedicated to the soprano Renata Tebaldi, born 100 years ago and who trained in Parma. Leonora was one of her great roles, putting plenty of pressure on Liudmyla Monastyrska, who headed a fine cast that wouldn’t go amiss on far starrier stages. Monastyrska’s powerful spinto was in strong evidence, rich in tone… Both her Act 1 aria Me pellegrina ed orfana and the more famous Pace, pace, mio Dio in the last act were nicely shaped. She reined in her large sound for a moving death scene.”

Mark Pullinger

Bachtrack

More Reviews

“Liudmyla Monastyrska, a soprano from Ukraine, was a Leonora of great presence, due to the volume of her voice and the skill she has in managing it, either with high notes thrown with force like arrows or for her charming mid-voices and pianissimo… All in all, excellent and much celebrated interpretation of hers.”

Andrea Merli, Opera Actual

 

“Rome Opera assembled a cast for this run that likewise harks back to an earlier era of grand voices, especially the Tosca of Liudmyla Monastyrska, whose combination of sumptuous voice and mercurial temperament made for a memorable Tosca. At turns kittenish, provocative, outlandish, simple, devout and brave, the Ukrainian soprano has an ample, supple voice with gleaming, secure high notes that pierce through Puccini’s rich orchestrations with ease. However, it wasn’t her high notes alone that made ‘Vissi d’arte’ so special, but also the exceptional beauty of her middle range.”

Rick Perdian, Seen and Heard International

“Liudmyla Monastyrska’s the line of singing, the timbre, and the good technique get me to draw a rough Tosca, of great vocal power, with a sharp well tempered and placed, impeccable. The lower register’s considerable projection made it heard without any problem throughout the hall, and gave us a Vissi d’arte of high level.”

Javier del Olivo, Platea Magazine

“Verdi’s La forza del destino at the Royal Opera House in London surprises twice: with a grandiose soprano and with a great conductor who can do almost anything… her soprano can do just about anything. Very attractive mezzo vocce in the highest register… but sometimes Monastyrska easily drowns out the orchestra, the choir and the soloist colleagues. The voice does not get sharp at any moment, but floods like a wave through the hall. And, if the score requires endless legati, she does it effortlessly tone by tone – it seems like she does not have to breathe at all .

Because technically so well equipped, this magnificent singer can express all feelings, all emotional levels through her vocal: peace, despair, death, restlessness, eroticism, fear of death, tenderness. Leonora goes through all of them, and Monastyrska, who sings it all fascinatingly, can therefore tell the slow, out-of-the-way gliding of her heroine in an enthralling and reliving way.”

Reinhard J. Brembeck, Süddeutsche Zeitung

“Monastyrska’s Leonora is beautifully drawn both dramatically and vocally. Her passion, fear, and anguish are articulated with pitch perfect intensity and coloratura.”

Rivka Jacobson, Plays To See