Kate Soper

R E V I E W S   for  The  H U N T

"...a darkly funny fairy tale...the work adds up to something that few would qualify as absolutely an opera or a musical, or even a play with music – but, in classic Soper fashion, none of them and all of them at once."  The New York Times (full review)

"The Hunt's strongest argument for the possibility of growth, connection, and agency even under adverse and restrictive circumstances lay, of course, in its music, in which three individual voices were able to combine and transform into something infinitely rich and strange."   Parterre Box (full review)

a "brilliantly inventive chamber opera...wholly original, composed fluidly to straddle the medieval and contemporary without falling into the trap of imitation."   Seen and Heard International (full review)

"A "sly and satisfying new chamber opera from Kate Soper, whose work has been at contemporary opera's vanguard for the past decade...suggestively tying questions about women, representation and patriarchy together with a welcome light touch."   Observer (full review)

A "fresh and witty new chamber opera...Soper's score and libretto function on several levels, offering pleasures for the eye and ear and ample food for thought.""   Classical Voice America (full review)



R E V I E W S   for  The  R O M A N C E  of the  R O S E

"Soper mobilizes the entire thousand-year history of music...I came away all the more convinced that [she] is a major music-theatre talent."  The New Yorker, 3/6/23 (full review)

"Tender, whip-smart .... with earnestness, wit, whimsy, self-awareness and music that ranges freely among Baroque madrigals, power ballads and barbed modernism."   The New York Times, 2/20/23 (full review)

"....to leave the theater dazed by a new opera is one thing. To be still processing where the humor ends and the meaning begins, even after time to reflect, is another much rarer and more valuable thing."   The LA Times, 2/23/23 (full review)



R E V I E W S   for  I P S A   D I X I T

"Ambitious, ingeneous .... what she's doing is enacting the polarities out of which art emerges."     The New York Times, 10/29/18 (full review)

"....comprehensively astounding.....a twenty-first century masterpiece."     The New Yorker, 2/20/17 (full review)

"....fertile fascination....dazzlingly varied....engages you instantly on contact, and then keeps you thinking, reflecting, admiring, and drawing new conclusions long after."     The Log Journal, 2/6/17 (full review)

"....startling, enthralling...."     The Alt, 12/19/16 (full review)


R E V I E W S   for  H E R E   B E   S I R E N S

"....inspired and strangely powerful...no one interested in smudging the boundaries of contemporary opera and theater should miss it."    The New York Times, 9/7/14 (full review)

"....brainy, baffling, consistently astounding...."    The New York Times, 1/22/14 (full review)

"....audacious, genre-bending music theatre...."    The Wall Street Journal, 9/8/14 (full review)

"....the fact that no one superlative seems to suffice is testament to how human a work Soper has managed to create...." I Care If You Listen, 1/21/14 (full review)

"...Erudite, hilarious, furiously inventive..." New Yorker Magazine, 2/3/14 (article on the Prototype Festival)



R E V I E W S   for  V O I C E S   from the   K I L L I N G   J A R

"....epic. It's the kind of piece that, if you were to see it performed live, there would be a slight gap between the end of the piece and the applause when the widespread gasps would make it sound as if this imaginary world has just escaped, leaving behind a slightly altered world."  WQXR, 1/12/14 (full review)

"....the work seems driven by curiosity, by a yearning to understand....an absolutely compelling recording."   I Care if You Listen, 4/20/14 (full review)

"...keen intelligence; lacerating wit; a time-traipsing style with extravagant sounds extracted from frugal resources; and, not least, Ms. Soper’s lithe voice and riveting presence."  New York Times artsbeat, 4/23/14 (full review)



M I S C   R E V I E W S

"[Soper's] work is consistently imaginative, complex, fascinating to hear and see performed..." New York Classical Review, 11/17/15 ((full review)

"....a composer of trenchant, sometimes discomfiting, power." The Boston Globe, 7/7/14 (full review)

"....what is so dazzling is how logical and well-crafted [Soper's music] is, and how lively...."   Classicaltv.com, "The Drift," 6/12/12 (full article)

"Soper...gasped, screamed, whispered, and babbled....It was a shuddering, full-body performance."   Pitchfork Magazine, 4/24/12 (full review)

"Another surprise was Kate Soper, vocalist and composer; a remarkably agile vocalist with impressive bell-like highs to deep contralto tones...."   Sequenza21.com, 12/14/11 (full review)

"[The Wet Ink Ensemble] is fearless in testing the limitations of what instruments or musical forms can be....That played out powerfully in the unnerving but entrancing two movements from Voices From the Killing Jar...."   The San Francisco Classical Voice, 11/14/11 (full review)

"....an exquisitely quirky setting of six poems by Martha Collins."   The New York Times, review of Door, 6/17/10 (full review)

"....now is forever is downright lush at times....but with a depiction more of invisible ether waves in the ether than anything oceanic. Any number of line readings....suggested the emergence of a first-class dramatist." Artsjournal, 1/22/13 (full review)