Eccomi in lieta vesta... O quante volte

At the end of Henrik Ibsen's classic play "A Doll's House," Nora has an epiphany that her husband Torvald has never treated her as an equal.  As she confronts him about this, it occurs to her that this is the first "serious conversation" they've ever had in 8 years of marriage.  "Why, my dearest Nora," he says, "what have you to do with serious things?"

This is her response.  

Performed by the LUNA Duo (Jordan Roulo, soprano and Emily Sprague-Klein, piano) and Clark Carruth, viola.

what have you to do with serious things?

Chelsea Feltman, soprano, was recently praised by the New York Classical Review for “...singing beautifully and inhabiting the sweetness of sincerity of the role” of Monica in Menotti’s The Medium, calling her performance “magnetic.” She has studied and performed at Tanglewood, Académie International d’Eté in Nice, La Lingua Della Lirica in Novafeltria, Italy, as Gretel in San Jose, Costa Rica, and as Gilda in a scenes concert at the Härnösand Opera Academy in Sweden.

Ms. Feltman is an alumna of The Juilliard School, where she completed her undergraduate studies, and Mannes College of Music, where she received her master’s degree and was a member of the Mannes Opera Program for two years. Her performances credits include the roles of Tytania in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Second Woman in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (both with the Juilliard Opera Workshop), Zerlina in Don Giovanni, and Lucia in The Rape of Lucretia under the baton of Joseph Colaneri (both with Mannes College). An avid performer of new music, she has sung the works of Del Tredici with Mo. Lowell Liebermann and the Mannes American Composers Ensemble, and performed the New York premiere of Melissa Dunphy's Tesla’s Pigeon with The Secret Opera. Equally at home in oratorio, Ms. Feltman recently appeared as the soprano soloist in Handel’s Messiah with the Metro Chamber Orchestra. Later this season she teams up with The Secret Opera again, as Frasquita in Carmen.

In addition to performing, Ms. Feltman is a founding director of The Secret Opera, an innovative opera company dedicated to politically and socially relevant readings of new and classic works. From 2011-2014, she served as a co-director of Art Powers Arusha, an arts-empowerment program bringing workshops to underserved youth in Arusha, Tanzania. 

Eccomi in lieta vesta... O quante volte

Chelsea Feltman

Related tracks