The Grange Festival's new production of The Rake's Progress features two Rayfield Allied artists both of whom have received excellent reviews for their performances:
Alexandra Oomens (Anne Trulove)
"Rising steadily in profile over the last few years, soprano Alexandra Oomens gives what is perhaps her best performance yet as Tom’s faithful Anne Trulove, her voice unfailingly appealing and her technical skills impeccable in a part that is frequently vocally exposed. Her heartfelt interpretation is unforgettable."
- George Hall, The Stage
"As the ever-constant Anne . . . Oomens sustains a really excellent concentrated tone, firmness of pitch and moving eloquence as she soars up to the top C with which Stravinsky finds a link back to the operas of the past."
- Nicholas Kenyon, The Telegraph
"Alexandra Oomens offers piercing clarity as Anne Trulove, at her best singing her heartbroken lullaby to Tom."
- Rebecca Franks, The Times
"Oomens delighted the audience with the sweetness of her tone and the earnestness of her commitment to the text."
- David Karlin, Bachtrack
Michael Mofidian (Nick Shadow)
"Michael Mofidian's Shadow shines in Antony McDonald's brilliant Rake's Progress at The Grange Festival:
The idyll is broken with the arrival of the Mephistophelian Nick Shadow, in the person of Michael Mofidian, dressed and bewigged in black, who sports a voice with a timbre of diamantine jet. Indeed I can’t remember a Nick Shadow - not Terfel, nor Gerald Finley - so ideally suited vocally to this devilish role. Initially, at least, he’s quite a charmer, an actor in conspiratorial rapport with his audience, who seduces us as well as Tom with his sardonic laid-back manner and elegant, athletic figure.
If Mofidian’s Shadow - terrifying in the card scene, set in what looks like an early railway tunnel (or is it a sewer?) - is this production’s primus inter pares, he is the star of a cast without a weak link."
- Hugh Canning, Operalouge
"As ultra-baddie Nick Shadow, Michael Mofidian was persuasive, his bass-baritone immense and sumptuous."
- Flora Willson, The Guardian
"... from the moment Michael Mofidian came on stage as Nick, there was only going to be one winner. Mofidian has a huge voice, a combination of youthfulness and steel rare in a bass-baritone. To that voice, he added a stage swagger that was supremely confident whether faux-ingratiating or just plain malevolent."
- David Karlin, Bachtrack
"Michael Mofidian is a wonderfully devilish presence."
- Rebecca Franks, The Times
"The third member of the central trio is bass-baritone Michael Mofidian as Nick Shadow, who never overplays the devilish nature of the sinister tempter, his charm and humour registering as well as his menace."
- George Hall, The Stage
