Anna Tomowa-Sintow

“The honeyed-silk sheen of Tomowa’s soprano, with it’s gorgeously musky lower register and seductive beat, is for me one of the joys of our operatic age… Purely vocally there were countless moments to treasure: the sugar-sweet sustained G-sharp on the ‘Silberne Rose’ ; the long-held ‘in dem Wie’ , and infinitely expressive pause before ‘da liegt der ganze Unterschied’; above all the trio…which built to a climax…with a fierce crescendo through the A-flat and a fortissimo B-natural that must have set every chandelier in the house rattling. … Those great dark eyes spoke volumes when she reproved her hairdresser, and at the first-act curtain when she gazed motion-less into the auditorium, holding the house breathless. … One last memory: the change in tone color between ‘Er soll jetzt gehn’, and ‘Er soll mich lassen’ in the first finale – what tenderness and regret! A great, great performance.”
Rodney Milnes – Opera

“The performance reached it’s musical apex, as all great ones must, in the famous third-act trio, where Anna Tomowa-Sintow, as the Marschallin, gently voiced her resolve to renounce her young lover… I doubt that neither of the singers in the past has created as warm, wise or immensely dignified a portrait as Tomowa-Sintow. … she made the princess’ obsession with aging and her philosophical acceptance of love’s passing understandable and undeniably poignant. She sang richly, sustaining the long phrases with a generous, steady soprano, bringing remarkable verbal point and bittersweet pathos to the first-act monoloque. Her farewell to Octavian at the inn was a textbook example of great operatic acting.”
John von Rhein – Chicago Tribune

“Standing head and shoulders above everyone was the wonderfully distinguished and patrician Anna Tomowa-Sintow as the Marschallin. A beautiful Junoesque woman, she moved and behaved like a well-born princess. Every emotional transition registered with the character, as she listened and reacted with consummate dignity and grandeur. She used the text pointedly, while pouring out a stream of gorgeous, satiny sound, culminating in a deeply felt, radiant opening to the trio of the last act. … Thank goodness for the show – saving Tomowa-Sintow. The show belonged to her.”
Jason T. McVicker

“Anna Tomowa-Sintow is the kind of Marschallin you dream of, a woman too old to be young and too young to be old. The developement of her character and moods…is a masterful achievement. She can sing pages in which the voice of Lotte Lehmann will always ring in my private ear, and achieve something that is unmistakably high art and distinctively her own, yet perfectly in harmony with her great predecessor.”
Rober C. Marsh – Chicago Sun Times

“And speaking of the utterly enchanting Anna Tomowa-Sintow, I have been thoroughly entranced by her Marschallin in Karajan’s 1984 Salzburger Festspiele. Such a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice…what a voice!”
The Met Opera Guild – James C. Fretz – on Anna Tomowa-Sintow and her recording of “Der Rosenkavalier” (Marschallin) under Herbert von Karajan

“Anna-Tomowa-Sintow made a most welcome return to the Royal Opera. The part of the Empress is ideally suited to the burnish gold of a voice at its peak.”
Graeme Kay – Opera Now

“There is some exceptionally fine singing, especially from Anna Tomowa-Sintow as the Empress, the shadowless woman of the title. I have no wish to be accused of sexism, but there is a vibrancy to her clean, lissome soprano that breathes the very essence of femininity, allied to a dignity of bearing and an indefinable spiritual purity that shines from her every gesture. And she matches Haitink in musical instinct, pouring forth phrase after sculpted phrase of sumptuous beauty throughout.”
Rodney Milnes – The Times

“…Anna Tomowa-Sintow is spell-binding in the title role…when she came to her moment of decision in Act 3, her soprano burst through the orchestra like burnished gold. She is a treasurable artist, heart-meltingly vulnerable and humane in the opera’s pivotal role.”
Hugh Canning – The Sunday Times

“Anna Tomowa-Sintow is a radiant, captivatingly humane, infinitely compassionate Empress.”
Robert Henderson – The Daily Telegraph

“The central role of the Empress suits Anna Tomowa-Sintow’s technique and professional stature ideally. Her interpretation grew in conviction and persuasiveness as the over four-hour-long opera progressed, until the deeply moving revelations of the scene with the almost stone Emperor. This epic, beautiful performance is the best thing Tomowa-Sintow has done here.
Tom Sutcliffe – The Guardian

“Her voice, in prime condition, fills out the line with a natural amplitude that betokens a wonderful directness of stage personality. I love her uncloying tenderness in the little scene with Barak, and the unmannered nobility of her demeneour in the Trial – the climatic spoken outburst, usually cut, is superbly handled.”
Max Lopert – The Financial Times

“Anna Tomowa-Sintow’s Empress, freezingly beautiful, meltingly expressive in front of her stone husband.”
Tom Sutcliff – Opera News

“The last truly successful Aida in the grand manner was Anna Tomowa-Sintow, who was paired with Pavarotti in his first MET performances as Radames, and a wonderful pair they made. She had the voice, the technique and enough of the style to make a total success of the role.”
The Met Opera Guild – on Anna Tomowa-Sintow’s performances of “Aida” at the New York Metropolitan Opera

“… it was Anna Tomowa-Sintow at whose feet one would have wanted to scatter roses. What a Marschallin!”
Die Presse

“Anna Tomowa-Sintow, a ‘grande dame’ of nobility and distinction”
Hamburger Abendblatt

“Tomowa-Sintow is breathtaking as Heliane! The aria “Ich ging zu ihm”, as sung by Anna Tomowa-Sintow …. I don’t know what it is about this aria, but I always get a lump in my throat whenever I hear it.”
The Met Opera Guild – James C. Fretz – on Anna Tomowa-Sintow and her recording of Korngold’s “Das Wunder der Heliane”