Lisette Oropesa shines and draws rave reactions in Met Opera’s ‘I Puritani’

Lisette Oropesa impresses Peter Gelb as more than a singer. “She reminds me a little bit of Beverly Sills,” the Metropolitan Opera general manager said. “She seems to have that kind of intellectual quickness. She’s extremely astute and she connects with people. Who knows? Maybe someday she’ll be running the Met?”

Sills was a renowned soprano who went on to lead the New York City Opera from 1979-89 before chairing the Met board from 2002-05, where she oversaw Gelb’s hiring.

The 42-year-old soprano from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is currently starring alongside tenor Lawrence Brownlee in the Met’s first new production of Bellini’s “I Puritani” since the celebrated 1976 staging that featured Luciano Pavarotti and Joan Sutherland.

Last week’s opening night earned enthusiastic critical acclaim after Oropesa masterfully navigated the opera’s challenging coloratura passages. This Saturday’s performance will be broadcast to audiences worldwide.

“I’ve been wanting to sing it forever. I think it’s Bellini’s best work,” Oropesa said of the opera. “I find ‘Puritani’ is one of the exceptions to the bel canto generalization of: it’s boring, it’s slow, it’s all about the singers, the text is terrible, the stories are stupid.”

Oropesa’s Met career began nearly two decades ago. She was among the winners at the 2005 Met National Council Auditions and subsequently joined the company’s prestigious young artists program. Her Met debut came a year later in Mozart’s “Idomeneo.” One of her first major roles at the house was in Puccini’s “La Rondine” on New Year’s Eve in 2008, where she appropriately portrayed a character named Lisette under conductor Marco Armiliato, who also leads this season’s “Puritani.”

“You can catch right away the sparkling in the voice,” Armiliato noted. “She’s developed her career in a beautiful and very intelligent way, choosing the right role in the right time.”

Following her Met breakthrough, Oropesa’s international career flourished with debuts at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich (2011), the Paris Opéra (2015), London’s Royal Opera House (2017), and Milan’s prestigious Teatro alla Scala (2019).

Though she had previously performed Elvira’s famous mad scene from “Puritani” in auditions, Oropesa felt she wasn’t ready to take on the complete role until recently.

“It’s good to be young and fresh because you’re agile, you’re resilient,” she explained. “But you don’t necessarily have the stamina that it takes to get through a long bel canto, big work like this. And that’s something that comes with age and experience.”

Her first fully staged Elvira came in February 2023 in Paris, also alongside Brownlee, who praised her dedication: “She is so committed in everything she does, and she gives a full performance every time she walks on stage.”

Oropesa follows a strict pre-performance routine that includes vocal rest. “Twelve hours of silence,” she revealed. “If you’re singing every day at a high level, that 8 to 8, 10 to 10, 12 to 12, whatever that half the day of the clock where you do not speak resets you better than any medicine, better than any Advil, better than anything.”

Her speaking roles at the Met have been limited, though she recently hosted the television broadcast of “Andrea Chenier” last month.

The soprano faced a significant vocal health challenge in July 2022 while traveling from Japan to Naples, Italy, for performances as Violetta in Verdi’s “La Traviata.”

“I got off the plane and I was like: My throat hurts. I’m sick or I’m getting sick or I’m jet-lagged or I need a few days,” she recalled. “Days and days go by, and I’m not getting sick. I just have this consistent pain in my throat.”

When her voice suddenly gave out during a warm-up before a dress rehearsal, she consulted a doctor who diagnosed severe acid reflux. “He takes one look at my vocal cords and he says, ‘You have reflux really bad,'” she said. “All your muscles around there are red. Your vocal cords are fine, but the muscles are so like burnt that they can’t hold your cords together.”

The doctor prescribed 10 days of rest, medication, and sleeping on an incline. As a 15-year vegan, she now generally avoids eating after performances to manage her condition.

Oropesa has demonstrated remarkable generosity toward younger singers. When hosting the 2020 Met National Council Auditions final concert, she announced a personal donation of $25,000 to increase the prize money for each of the five winners from $15,000 (the same amount she received in 2005) to $20,000.

“It is a very, very difficult profession, as you all know, and this is the time that that money really, really makes all the difference,” she told the audience. Her initiative inspired Met donors to maintain the increased prize level for future winners.

Looking ahead, Oropesa will tackle the title role in Bellini’s “Norma” for the first time in a concert at Finland’s Savonlinna Opera Festival in late July. Two weeks later, she’ll make her role debut as Liu in Puccini’s “Turandot” at Italy’s Arena di Verona – marking her 50th operatic role.

“Sometimes you take for granted artists who you see growing up in front of you and I think in the case of Lisette we might have been guilty of that,” Gelb reflected. “She felt, and maybe she was right, that she had to go to Europe to prove herself as a star — and she certainly became a very big star in Europe — to get the attention of the Met. But she certainly has our attention now.”