“In dialogues that brought to mind moments in Opera Australia’s recent performance of Wagner’s Parsifal, mezzo soprano Jacqueline Dark created still beauty and expressive nuance, while Jose Carbo sang with rounded noble strength and colour grained with suffering.
The choir sang the angelic moments with well moulded shape though with some intonation strain in quiet moments.
No doubt they were saving themselves for the Demons’ fugue of Part II, which they sang with robust vigour.”
“Jacqueline Dark rounded out the trio of soloists as the Angel. As critic and musicologist Michael Steinberg put it, “the part of the Angel wants a soothing beauty of timbre” – and this is exactly what the mezzo-soprano brought to the table with an understated yet gorgeous shepherding of Gerontius through the afterlife, Dark’s Alleluia’s rising up to hint at greater power held in reserve.”