Otello, Teatro Regio di Torino, October 2014

 

“Soprano Maria José Siri has a warm and passionate voice, not without shadowy hues that helped presage Desdemona’s sad fate. Her performance of the “Willow Song” was particularly refined, characterized by the rather colloquial cast of the recitative and the skilfully rendered, melancholy tint of the cantabile, which signified the protagonist’s total identification with the ill-fated handmaid Barbara.”
Marco Leo, GBOpera

“Desdemona is a role that requires subtlety and delicacy, but also power. No weak woman, she clearly possesses the courage necessary to confront the prejudices of her time by marrying Otello. We already noted the talents of Maria José Siri when she moved the audience in Damiano Michieletto’s Suor Angelica. This singer has a warm, very seductive voice and gave us gorgeous moments in the love duet of the first act. Hers was a Desdemona in quest of truth. By employing just the right shades of apprehension and of hope, Siri created moving dramatic effects. In her canny alternation between tenderness and doubt in the Willow Song and the Ave Maria she revealed the serenity of a woman who has accepted the inevitability of her death. This was a stunning interpretation by Maria José Siri, who fully merited the ovations of the audience.”
Le mille e una notte all'Opera