reviews
After a longer break, Kolonits first appeared before an audience at the premiere, achieving enormous personal success. She dominates the stage in every moment of the work, participating in the action as a true queen, even when crawling on her knees to beg her opponent’s forgiveness.
Vocally, the role is overwhelmingly hers, but she doesn’t place emphasis on vocal bravura, but rather on the ever-deeper portrayal of the soul. Her relationships with her supporters (Anna, Robert, and Talbot) are exemplarily developed, and each is different. With Anna, she is intimate, almost comradely. Robert is, of course, her beloved- she visibly melts in his presence even when she cannot touch him. Beside Talbot, she returns to childhood, as if he were her father. Her confrontation with Elizabeth is extremely complex – first she humbles herself in hope of freedom, but when faced with insults, she gains the upper hand in an instant. Even unspoken, we feel that Mary will triumph, even if not in this life – her son James will be there to take the English throne from Elizabeth. (If we think about it, this situation has appeared similarly before in Kolonits’s career, in the figure of Elizabeth Szilágyi.) She accepts her downfall with head held high, with deep humanity, almost serenely. Kolonits’s portrayal carries within it the essence of the bel canto heroines she has embodied over the past decades. The complex role of Mary Stuart is a kind of résumé – it contains so many Bellini and Donizetti heroines. It is the pinnacle of an outstanding career.
2025 May 14th, momus.hu, zéta
Klára Kolonits’ talents seem tailormade for a role like Maria. She possesses generous, full tone and yet, can negotiate all the tricky fioritura, and is not afraid to cap off her many arias, duets and ensembles with full, healthy high notes. But just as important, her Maria emerges as a fully-rounded woman, possessing hopes, fears and is not afraid to stand her ground.
The famous scene in which she and Elisabetta meet in the forests of Fotheringay (completely made up!) saw Kolonits at her dramatic peak as she calls into question Elisabeth’s legitimacy, thus sealing her own tragic fate. This soprano should be singing roles of this type in any house that cares to stage them.
2025 June 2nd, myscena.org, Gianmarco Segato
Kolonits and Balga (as Queen Elizabeth) skillfully convey the complexity of their characters in the magnificent duel in which Mary can no longer bear the situation with her cousin and unleashes her famous “Figlia impura di Bolena, parli tu di disonore? / Meretrice, indegna e oscena, in te cada il mio rossore / Profanato è il soglio inglese, vil bastarda, dal tuo piè!”: impure daughter of Boleyn, prostitute, unworthy, obscene, vile bastard! Absolutely brilliant, but this is her death sentence.
(…) Klára Kolonits, soprano, offers a Mary Stuart with vocal control and expressiveness that balance dignity and vulnerability, we liked her very much, the most.
2025 June 6th, Beckmesser
Klára Kolonits had already proven earlier that she is a true bel canto prima donna who is committed to performing early Romantic Italian operas, and it is no exaggeration to consider this premiere her benefit performance. Three years ago, she had already portrayed the character of Mary Stuart in two concert performances, and now her character development could reach full fruition: she mastered the vocal part with technical superiority, singing even the most difficult ornaments with a beautiful, ringing soprano voice. She proved once again that the elaborate coloraturas of bel canto operas can be put in service of dramatic processes with proper technical knowledge, sensitivity and musicality, and provide the prima donna with the opportunity to display a wide range of emotions. The artist fully identified with the character of the vulnerable queen, and at the end of the performance she was able to reap her well-deserved laurels. Her character portrayal was very human, and the figure was emotionally touching. In the prison scene, she sang with such spiritualized sublimity that only few are capable of, and in the final scene Mary’s character became transfigured.
2025 June 19th, Kortárs Online, Péter Zoltán
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Klára Kolonits, who portrayed Mary, stood out, and one can only speak of her in superlatives.
It has long been common knowledge that this excellent soprano is an ideal bel canto singer, who conquers the most astounding vocal challenges with incredible ease and superiority, the most extreme coloraturas. In her case, these virtuosic musical materials do not demonstrate the possibilities contained within the voice in the sense of pushing its boundaries. Rather, it is precisely the ease and the ability to make the vocal part sound not just as technical realization, but as an artistic form capable of conveying feelings and human content that transcend itself – like any other music, as a means of expression – that makes the vocal production truly captivating. Her Mary is a fallible human being whose wretched circumstances have not broken her spiritual strength. When she must face death, she is able not to perceive it as a blow, but instead to prepare for it appropriately, to be liberated through it from her earthly constraints, and thereby to defeat her enemies by the fact that while they must continue to struggle with their earthly existence, she can now be free.
2025 May 12th, Fidelio
The vocal part of Mary Stuart, who became queen at age 16 but awaits death in the opera, was given to Klára Kolonits in the original cast, not by coincidence. On her album titled “Reloaded,” she eloquently demonstrated her attraction to bel canto operas. Technical difficulties never posed a problem for her – it’s incomprehensible that the singer was long neglected by the Opera House’s successive managements. Her portrayal and singing as Mary Stuart will remain memorable; her interpretation was of world-class standard.
2025 June 8th, Papiruszportál, Lehotka Ildikó