News & Press
Classical Music Magazine, Profile
Click here for page one of Kevin Bee’s profile on Kiera in Classical Music magazine.
Click here for page two of Kevin Bee’s profile on Kiera in Classical Music magazine.
The Evening Standard
But Kiera Duffy, as Candide’s fickle love Cunegonde, was the audience’s darling. Looking lovely and relishing the comedy, she aced “Glitter and be Gay”, and enjoyed a lively double act with Kim Criswell’s Old Lady.
-The Evening Standard, UK, June 7, 2011
The Guardian
…up against Kiera Duffy’s wonderfully delivered Cunégonde, piling on the bling as she dazzled her way through Glitter and Be Gay.
-The Guardian, UK, June 7, 2011
National Post
The female half of the pair was Kiera Duffy, a brilliant soprano with a lustrous edge that sets it apart from the high-altitude norm. Vocal fans tend to equate soprano acrobatics with the baroque and bel canto periods, but I am willing to bet that the demands of Strauss’s Brentano-Lieder Op. 68 are even greater. This was wonderfully luminous and fluid singing, laced with Rosenkavalier charm.
-National Post, Canada, August 6, 2011
Opera Today
…she dazzled in ‘Glitter and be gay’, crystal clear when striking the stratospheric heights of Cunegonde’s wild enthusiasm for a bling-laden life of recklessness and glamour.
-Opera Today, June 7, 2011
Atlanta Journal Constitution
Happily, Kiera Duffy significantly upped the ante every time she opened her mouth, bold, sassy, quite the most unrepentantly slutty Cunegonde I recall seeing, and one who threw off the coloratura campery of “Glitter and Gay” with delicious aplomb, well-stocked jewel-box, E-flat and all… Put Duffy and [Kim] Criswell together, as in “Little Women” and you got a glimpse of what we should have had elsewhere all night: joy unconfined. -Opera Brittanica, UK, June, 7, 2011
Kiera Duffy, ridiculous and hilarious in her impersonations, offered a precisely sung and highly musical Despina. Like [Matthew] Plenk and the other women, she’s a star in the making.
-Atlanta Journal Constitution, April 14, 2011
Opera News
A strong cast — the standouts included nOah [sic] Stewart, Miriam Murphy, Kiera Duffy, Frank Kelley, the highly promising Irish baritone Owen Gilhooly and, as Charlie, the gifted young treble Michael Kepler Meo — had its work cut out for it, as did the orchestra.
-Opera News, October 19, 2010
The Irish Times
None of the evening’s musical weakness seemed ascribable to the cast, who gave everything their considerable all, with Kiera Duffy’s Violet Beauregard, Abigail Nims’s Veruca Salt and Miriam Murphy’s Mrs Gloop taking the vertiginous vocal demands in their stride.
-The Irish Times, October 19, 2010
Los Angeles Times
Schoenberg’s greatly influential chamber work, “Pierrot Lunaire,” circa 1912, fascinates still. Tuesday’s visit confirmed its fresh appeal, as played with properly chilled panache by a sextet conducted by Stefan Asbury and featuring incisively expressive soprano Kiera Duffy. Whether limning melodies or exercising the composer’s signature semi-singing “Sprechstimme,” Duffy beautifully captured the magic, abandon and melancholy in Schoenberg’s 21 miniatures, from “Mondestrunken (`Moondrunk’)” to the final line “O, ancient scent from far-off days” — now somehow relevant to the venerable opus itself.
-Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2010