Whenever a singer decides to change repertory, not in a secret and furtive way, but with total conviction and a veritable challenge, the recognition gained by audience and specialised press counts more than with a common role debut. This happened with Heidi Brunner’s first ever Mère Marie in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at the Klagenfurt Theatre, an outright overwhelming production (conducted by Alexander Soddy and staged by Richard Brunel). A summary of some reviews:

“Within the homogenous ensemble highly professional singing actresses succeeded to convince: ...Heidi Brunner’s Mère Marie with vocal beauty tearing the wires of action from the back-ground” indicated for example Die Presse (14.02.2015), „Intriguingly predominant Heidi Brunner as Mère Marie“ wrote Die Kronenzeitung (14.02.2015) and Das Opernglas (04.2015) certified “Though intense was the Heidi Brunner’s embodiment of Mother Marie with metallic-lustre timbre.” Karl Harb resuming for the Salzburger Nachrichten (21.02.2015) describes the utterly special scenic-vocal characterization of the Carmelites: “Any voice has its distinctive profile: ... Heidi Brunner’s quite ambivalent energy in the role of the sub-prioress Mère Marie who survives in the very end”. Der Standard (17.02.2015) also reports enthusiastically: “... how Heidi Brunner accurately acts as the clearly contrastive character of the rational sub-prioress Marie ... is vocally a great experience and perfectly realized from the staging.”

Hermann Becke’s review on opernfreund.de (15.02.2015) specifies in detail: “Heidi Brunner, a well versed artist and familiar with numerous main theatres, was also outstanding. ... She became the second leading part as Mére Marie that night. It is really great and deeply moving music-theatre how she takes over the responsibility for the Carmel after the prioress’s death first, then hopes to become the next prioress herself before she resigns to being not elected and finally and after all rushes to the executed nuns in black despair. Furthermore her accomplishment of the vocally demanding part was wonderful and convincing. She too was perfectly casted ... Heidi Brunner sang her first Kundry recently and has now become an overwhelming Mère Marie!”

New ground has been broken with great success. Fricka, Waltraute, Herodias and The Nurse are posing new challenges to Heidi Brunner.