Melinda Bargreen | 28 OCT 2024
It lasts just under three minutes.
But Mozart’s aria, “Der Hölle Rache,” is known worldwide as the great proving ground for the coloratura sopranos who are brave and gifted enough to sing the Queen of the Night role in his opera The Magic Flute.
The aria and the role hold no terrors for soprano Rainelle Krause, who will perform the role in The Atlanta Opera’s upcoming production of The Magic Flute, Novemeber 2, 5, 8 and 10, at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
In fact, when you visit her website, you can see and hear her singing “Der Hölle Rache,” with its stratospheric high Fs, suspended in midair, upside down in aerial silks. It’s mind-boggling. On the website, www.rainellekrause.com, click on “Aerial Queen of the Night,” or watch the YouTube video below. Prepare to gasp.
Singing such a challenging aria upside down is “business as usual” for Krause, who has sung the Queen of the Night in many venturesome productions — in Amsterdam, for instance, while seated in a wheelchair and chasing after Pamina. And she has also sung the famous revenge aria while depicted as a huge spider strapped to a wall (at Houston Grand Opera). Krause has appeared as the Queen at the Royal Danish Opera, Dutch National Opera, Staatsoper Berlin Unter den Linden, and Nashville Opera; at Les Arts, València, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Theater Basel, Oper Köln, Opera Orchestre Montpellier Occitanie, and North Carolina Opera.
Opera Magazine observed (of her English National Opera performance) that “her bright, ringing coloratura was enough to instill fear into any living being.” And at Houston Grand Opera, “Krause blazed through the Queen’s two arias with a brilliance, agility, and precision that outshone even the video projections.”
“It’s such a fairytale,” Krause says of the opera. “I can imagine any number of interpretations!”
She has been drawn to the Queen of the Night (and the role’s dazzling coloratura opportunities) since her school years, when Krause first discovered what her voice could do.
“I knew I was a coloratura early on,” she reflects. “But the Queen was not a comfortable fit for me until after I earned my master’s degree.” Now she feels she has grown into the role.
“I’m in excellent vocal shape now,” Krause reflects. “This is the best I’ve ever sung. I love it. I’ll sing the Queen of Night until I can sing no more. I like the pace; I like the ferocity of the role. And it’s a great door-opener.”
At the same time, Krause envisions a future that extends far beyond Mozart.
“There will always be a market need [for the Queen of the Night], but it also will be exciting to explore different colors and more richness in the voice in other operas. I would love to sing Sophie, Constanza, Gilda.”
Krause keeps vocally fit by paying close attention to both her physical and mental health: “The body and the voice are inextricably linked, and being at ease in your body is very important for the voice. My philosophy hearkens back to my undergraduate years, when we were advised to ‘free up your bodies, free up your voices,’ and I tried singing from several different positions.
“It hasn’t always been easy! I’ve gone through back and knee injuries, and I have yanked three ribs out of joint. Heavy rehab is the answer: I’ve been working on rebuilding my shoulders and spine. Now I’m singing really well.”
Krause has kept in shape ever since 2013 by training on aerial silks, a form of exercise that hoists the body above the ground and focuses on upper body strength as muscle groups work in a variety of ways to keep the body in a given stance or position.
Along the way, Krause has learned “some weird things singers do.” There’s the LaxVox straw, which she discovered in Amsterdam when all her fellow singers were sick with colds and phlegm. The straw, Krause explains, is a wide tube similar to a Boba straw; the singer inserts it into a water bottle and blows bubbles into it (“voiced or unvoiced”). The air bounces off the water and back into the pharynx and the vocal tract; this reduces the phlegm and clears the airways.
“This also works to hydrate the tissues,” Krause advises, “and it’s good for fatigue.”
Traveling, rehearsal schedules, performances: no wonder there’s some occasional fatigue.
“It’s not so easy, being on the road,” she says. “Often, you’re in little apartments, where you can’t really cook — there are dull knives and often there isn’t the cookware you need. You’re hauling luggage up and down stairs. You do the laundry. And there are the rehearsal periods, which are very intense: just a few hours of rehearsal can be like a 12-hour day.”
The payoff, as Krause sees it, is that she now is in “excellent vocal shape — I’m singing the best I’ve ever sung.” In the spring, Krause will undertake her first Lucia, a prospect she finds “very exciting.” The Queen of the Night has been a great career boost for her: “I love it,” she declares. “I like the pace; I like the ferocity. I will sing the Queen until I can sing no more. It’s a great role, and there is always a market need for the Queen of the Night. She is eternal.” ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- The Atlanta Opera: atlantaopera.org
- Rainelle Krause: rainellekrause.com
Read more by Melinda Bargreen.
RECENT POSTS
Roderick Cox leads the Atlanta Symphony in a riveting return to the podium with Barber, Adams, and Rachmaninoff • 27 Oct 2024
True to their name, Chanticleer’s a cappella brilliance launches Cathedral Concert Series • 25 Oct 2024
