Charlotte Hellekant

“Swedish mezzo soprano Charlotte Hellekant's decisive performance showed her full mastery over a demanding tonal language whose outcome is designed to rouse heightened emotional content. Equally virtuosic in her vocal and thespian dexterity, Hellekant's committed execution awakened the mystique of the darker side of the unconscious — an allusion to Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams.” (Joel Luks, culturemap.com Houston, May 2013)

“Charlotte Hellekant captivated with songs from [Weill’s] Broadway hit One Touch of Venus. In the early Brecht songs Bilbao and Surabaya Johnny from Happy End, she gave us distinct characters and big solo scenes… she was vocally on great form.” (Marianne Kierspel, Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger, January 2013)

“Hosokawa brings himself to the forefront as a composer, as does mezzo-soprano Charlotte Hellekant, with their all encompassing skill and strong expressiveness” (Luxemburger Wort, October 2012)

“Charlotte Hellekant invests her whole personality in the work, lending her expressive, warm and flexible tone” (Opera Magazine, October 2012)

"Hellekant sings her long and challenging role fantastically, expressing emotional pain without even for a second losing intensity, and other times singing with a dreamlike affection, as with Helena Juntunen's Karin."(Helsingin Sanomat, November 2011)

“Charlotte Hellekant was riveting as the mad king (Eerik XIV), capturing the varied moods of the increasingly quixotic monarch with real feeling (I was minded of Fiona Shaw’s brilliant rendering of Shakespeare’s King Richard II), charting the unravelling of his mind compellingly through a weft of sly orchestral allusions to key Western Classical masterworks.” (Guy Rickards, Tempo)

"Charlotte Hellekant as king Erik offered, besides a vocally expressive interpretation of an utmost demanding role, the greatest acting I have ever witnessed on an opera stage. She hung, climbed, stumbled and crawled, gesticulated and grimaced, and captured wonderfully the essence of the confused monarch's impulsive whims and tirades." (Hufvudstadsbladet, November 2011)

"The chemistry between Andris Nelsons and the CBSO is nothing less than sublime...Hellekant's nuancing of the text and her resourceful versatility of timbre were only matched by the glowing detail Nelsons found in the score...' (Birmingham Post, September 2009)

"Charlotte Hellekant was riveting in the title role, especially seductive in the mezza voce singing she brought to the Habanera yet stoic and full of controlled energy in the Card Song." (Opera, February 2008)

"Hellekant, making Judith unusually and frighteningly neurotic, alternately seduced him with sensual sounds and attacked him with invective. Her ability to sustain such alarming intensity throughout is testament to her greatness as an artist." (The Guardian, August 2007)