Barton combined spiteful black magic with a tinge of grandmotherly compassion in a performance whose vocal shadings supported all that dramatic complexity…

Barton turned Duparc’s ‘Phydilé’ into a ravishing piece of shimmering gold… [with] ‘Acerba voluttà’ from Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur showing Italianate verismo fire, and power to spare.

Barton’s portrayal of Fricka was brilliantly purposeful and vocally commanding. Her flamboyant mezzo-soprano, with its inky depths and flickering hues, rendered the character as guardian of legal integrity. But, in the surprisingly tender tone in which she passes the responsibility on to Brünnhilde, she hinted at a deeper sense of not only the futility, but also the undesirability of being proved right…

Barton’s rich, powerful mezzo-soprano made her a superb Fricka, with a meaty quality in her chest voice and burning vitality throughout. Her characterization was a perfect mix of pride, grief, and exasperation, betraying her frustration at her husband Wotan through the ferociousness of her singing…

Barton’s nuanced performance is intriguingly conflicted and tormented…

The mezzo-soprano was riveting – Barton’s high notes soared like a bel canto soprano and her growling chest voice had a disturbing, almost feral quality. She charted the imprisoned Azucena’s psychological disintegration with an almost clinical degree of vocal and dramatic acuity…

Barton runs the gamut from hallowed pianissimos to powerful, true Verdian chest voice…

A very beautiful, round, warm voice that makes her long phrases flow beautifully…

Barton, as Sara, gave a performance rich in pathos and cloaked in the thickly upholstered vocal colors that make her singing so irresistible…

Impeccable diction and voices of real substance get the opera off to a tremendously powerful start… Previously impressing mightily for both power and beauty of line as the cycle’ Fricka, Jamie Barton delivers an equally radiantly sung Waltraute…