Soprano Rachel Harnisch

Jakropoulos - Leoš Janáček
Opera Vlaandern Antwerpen/Gent
Symfonisch Orkest + Koor Opera Vlaanderen
Dirigent: Tomáš Netopil

Rachel Harnisch immediately attracts all the attention. She does this not only through her impeccable and breathtaking vocals, but also through the apparent ease with which she plays the 300-year-old young lady. Proud, great and with a fragility that shows a lot of life experience. The Makropulos thing is a dream of a season opener of an opera house: impressive and convincing in every respect: visually, musically and in narrative technique. The highlight: the last scene, in which Elina Makropulos - a fascinating Rachel Harnisch - says goodbye to her three hundred years of life ..the pictures, as in a music video by David Bowie or David Lynch.
Els Van Steenberghe

Rachel Harnisch glasses de tous son éclat dans son immense finale ou les lignes vocales sont lumineuses at elargies, tout cela a travers un obtrusive and a posture conquerante.
forum opera

Grandiose Janacek premiere in the Flemish OperaThe directorial work of Mondruczo is as enthralling and conclusive, as one could not wish for. And he has a great ensemble of singers at his disposal. Each role is type-appropriate, especially the title role. The Swiss soprano Rachel Harnisch makes her debut as Emilia Marty. She lives through every scene absolutely credible and wholeheartedly intense.
Hans Reul

Rachel Harnisch sang this momentum with incredible dynamics. The figure of Emilia Marty struggles outwardly and inwardly, until at the end a completely bald and fragile woman stands on the stage. Rachel Harnisch and her expressive soprano were a touching visual and listening experience. No wonder that the audience responded with rapturous applause to the great performance of Rachel Harnisch.
Franz Straatman

ce le rôle central revient ici à une chanteuse jeune et belle, la Suissesse Rachel Harnisch, formidable de netteté et de puissance vocal mais aussi confondante de présence scénique. Sa première apparition est comme un coup de poing: pantalon de cuir serrant sur bottillons profilés, veste ajustée et casque intégral qu'elle enlève pour révéler cheveux courts, mèches blondes et lunettes noires. La référence au Bowie the "China Girl" or "The Man Who Fell to Earth" est évidente.
Nicolas Blanmont

Rachel Harnisch, who makes a brilliant debut with this game, goes to her physical limits (thank the youthfulness). She is a dying person from the beginning, but does not play her physical decay like a human, but like an artificial being, like a robot. Behind it is a reference to Karel Capek's famous science fiction novel "R.U.R." ". It is a miraculous artifact that is superior to the present: its artistic-mechanistic corporeality goes back to a technique developed under the name "biomechanics" by the Russian theater genius Vsevolod Mejerchol in the days of Capek and Janacek. This figure, this man, who no longer wants to keep his secret of eternal life in the "Makropulos affair", at the end of his existence quenches black blood from all his pores. From above, metal gripping arms descend over the furniture, grab them and pull them up. At that moment, Janacek opens the door to the world of the cantilenas for Emilia Marty aka Elena Makropulos - for the first and only time in this opera - in which the whipping sound of his music frees itself from the corset of continuous recitativo accompagnato, in an ardent letting go One can also grasp the emotional release from the torment of life in the face of death. For this, the Swiss soprano possesses the necessarily tight, extremely larga-proof and modulatable, never overbearing, more lyrical-than-dramatic organ, which, as it were, acoustically crowns the whole thing. "
The Opera Glass, K. G. von Karais

La soprano suisse Rachel Harnisch - incandescente Rachel dans Les Huguenots lyonnais la saison dernière - est une Emilia Marty de haute volée La voix possède la dureté inhumaine et la violence cynique que l'on attend du personnage, tout en trouvant des réserves de malléabilité insoupçonnées pour sculpter un monologue final d'une bouleversante intensité. "
Opera Online, Emmanuel Andrieu