Olga Pudova walks Strauss’s epic coloratura tightrope

THE SONGBIRD: Olga Pudova was born in Leningrad. In 2001 she entered the Mariinsky Academy of Young Opera Singers, then graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov St Petersburg State Conservatory in 2006. She won many prizes and made her Mariinsky debut in 2006 as Contessa di Folleville and has sung there regularly as a principal coloratura. In 2013, Pudova debuted at the Vienna State Opera as Queen of the Night, a role she subsequently sang in Paris, Munich, Berlin, Dresden, Rome, Turin, Venice, Barcelona, Ghent, Antwerp, Nice, Bordeaux, Dallas, Philadelphia, and at the Aix-en-Provence festival. She has appeared across Europe including as Fiakermilli (Dresden), Zerbinetta (Paris, Zurich), Konstanze (Geneva), Giunia (Versailles), Olympia (Munich), Le Fee (Glasglow), Rossignol (Cardiff), Cunegonde and Violetta (Moscow), and Lucia and Gilda (Riga). THE MUSIC: Richard Strauss’s opera “Ariadne auf Naxos“ premiered twice. The first was in 1912 in Stuttgart where it was conceived as a short opera to accompany a new adaption of Moliere’s play, “Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.“ This version was performed in other cities over the next year (Zurich, Munich, Prague, and London), but the play/opera hybrid concept proved ineffective (and way too long at over six hours). Working with his librettist/partner Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Strauss refashioned the opera as a stand-alone work with a newly added prologue, which premiered to success in Vienna in 1916. This version of the opera was quickly embraced by critics, artists, and the public -- it has since been recorded commercially many times and is performed regularly around the world. Zerbinetta’s grand aria “Grossmächtige Prinzessin“ is arguably the most daunting coloratura showpiece ever written. It’s not just long at about 12 minutes; it doesn’t merely contain a full armada of coloratura vocal acrobatics (trills, cadenzas, scales, filigree, high notes, wide leaps, and so on); it’s not just the freewheeling harmonic structures -- no, this scene demands a level of virtuosic musicianship and theatrical flair that is simply unmatched. Zerbinetta is a coloratura soubrette on steroids! In this scene and role, Strauss invented an entirely new musical language to exploit the unique glories of the coloratura soprano voice. He revisited this proprietary mode of highly gymnastic and chromatic vocalism a few other times afterwards: in the art song “Amor“ (1918), with Fiakermilli in “Arabella“ (1933), and for Aminta in “Die schweigsame Frau“ (1935).