Claycomb, Laura

Laura Claycomb ( born Laura Claycomb ; born August 23, 1968 , Corpus Christi , Texas ) - American opera singer ( soprano ).

Trained at the San Francisco Opera House on a program for young performers. In 1994 she took second place at the International Competition of Performers named after Tchaikovsky in Moscow. In the same year she made her debut on the stage of the Geneva Opera in the part of Juliet in the Capulet and Montecchi opera by Vincenzo Bellini , replacing the sick soloist. In the same part, she later debuted in the Bastille Opera and the Los Angeles Opera. Among other key parts in the Claycomb repertoire are Gilda in Rigoletto by Verdi , Lucia di Lammermoor in the eponymous opera Donizetti , Cleopatra in Julia Caesar by Handel . Claycomb performs in the modern repertoire - in particular, the party of Amanda in Gyorgy Ligeti 's opera The Great Dead Thrilf was performed by her at the Salzburg Festival and in a recording that was nominated for a Grammy Award . As noted by Russian music critic Varvara Turov,

Laura Claycomb is distinguished by one amazing quality - absolute omnivorous. <...> Laura Claycomb can, wants and, in fact, sings almost the entire existing opera repertoire. It has about 6 dozen operatic roles, 46 chamber, 31 for voice and orchestra and 15 operetta parts ^[2] .

According to Claycomb herself, she is also interested in baroque music (to which she was attracted by acquaintance with Emmanuel Aim ), and the latest works, in particular, by Arvo Pärt and Kaiya Saariakho ^[3] .

In 2006 , the singer visited Moscow on tours, prompting rave reviews from the press. So, Natalia Zimyanina noted:

Sometimes she even sophisticated music lovers were in an unforgivable mistake: it seemed that we were more an actress than a singer. But what is the technique! What did she do better - the complicated experiences of the village simpleton Ann from The Adventures of Rogue , the terrible coquetry of Fire or the disarming helplessness of fragile Gilda from Rigoletto? Some kind of God's streak pulses in her unusual voice, forcing him to respond to his every turn ^[4] .

According to another critic,

Claycomb brilliantly coped with all the musical wonders, in the first part she sang music of the 20th century, in the second - the Italian classics and took the transcendent top notes so easily that the audience was breathtaking ^[5] .

In 2010, Laura Claycomb and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas won the Grammy Award for recording the Eighth Symphony by Gustav Mahler . In the same year she took part in the Second Big Festival of the Russian National Orchestra in Moscow, as well as in the concert performance of Offenbach 's opera “ Tales of Hoffmann ”, having performed the parts of all four main characters.

In 2013, she performed the role of the main character on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater in Bellini's opera “ La Sonnambula ”.