Mari Moriya's bright, confident Zerbinetta is a winner

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THE SONGBIRD: Mari Moriya was born in Oyama, Japan. She received a Master of Music degree from the Musashino Academy of Music in Tokyo and further studied at Mannes College of Music. She did well in top competitions including the Metropolitan Opera National Auditions, Cardiff Singer of the World, and the Belvedere Singing Competition. Moriya made her debut at the Met in 2006 as Queen of the Night and was subsequently engaged for this role many times around the world (Pittsburgh, Portland, Baltimore, Seattle, Glyndebourne, Leipzig, Scotland, Vienna, Linz, and Basel). In the U.S. she was Juliette in Philadelphia and Adina in Tulsa. In Europe she was Zerbinetta and Zerlina in Dublin, Norma in Gdansk, Clorinda in Salzburg, and Lakme and Gilda in Linz. In Japan, she has sung Konstanze, Pamina, Tytania, and Donna Anna, as well as shifting into more dramatic roles including Salome, Cio-Cio San, Gutrune, Marschallin, Sieglinde, and Leonora ("Trovatore").
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).