JACQUELINE

(a Duo Drama about cellist, Jacqueline Du Pré)

Luna Pearl Woolf, Composer and Royce Vavrek, Librettist

American soprano Marnie Breckenridge creates the title role, and in one of opera’s great moments of fortune, she not only looks uncannily like du Pré, but she sings extraordinarily, with an ease that belies the significant demands in Luna Pearl Woolf’s score. Big, striking British accent, bell-like ring over an enormous range and personality spilling from every note, Breckenridge’s performance is organic and improvisatory. She makes us like and understand this du Pré, whisking us away on her exhausting highs and lows and cinching Jacqueline’s place as a new opera with real legs.

The Globe And Mail, Jenna Simeonov

SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY
In the Pink

With their presence imbuing the piece with the aura of an avant-garde masque, an effect which was only heightened when the soprano Marnie Breckenridge suddenly appeared seemingly out of nowhere at end of the catwalk clad like a malevolent pink snow queen and stepped on to it to sing Stradella's “Queste Lagrime e Sospire” from the oratorio San Giovanni Battista. Breckenridge, who's sung memorably in local productions by West Edge Opera and Opera Parallèle, sang the aria with a ravishing clear tone, superb enunciation, and pretty much stole the show as she dragged the trio of dancers across the catwalk like willing slaves succumbing to her every tear and passionate sigh as they followed her into Purgatory.
A Best In A Jungle, Mark Rudio

THE WASHINGTON CHORUS
New Music for a New Age

Soprano Marnie Breckenridge has sung everything from soloist in Johannes Brahms’s German Requiem to La Princesse in Philip Glass’s “Orphée.” In Sunday’s “Odas de Todo el Mundo,” Breckenridge along with cellist Haimovitz and pianist Joel Ayau turned her voluminous voice skillfully this way and that to portray the role of what Woolf calls “a street hawker” in poetry by the noted Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. For “Rumi: Quatrains of Love,” Breckenridge, Haimovitz and Ayau combined in a moving portrayal of young lovers at dawn, the soprano looming over the piano strings in Sprechstimme (semi-speaking tones).
The Washington Post
 

THE MOTHER
Dog Days

The vacant-eyed mother (the soprano Marnie Breckenridge, who brings tragic vulnerability to the role), is struggling to maintain some semblance of family life.
New York Times, Anthony Tommasini                                                                                                                           Prototype Festival, NY
 

The opera has many hallmarks of a chamber piece. It unfolds as a series of solos, duets and ensembles, and each family member gets to shine. Especially winning were the two women — Marnie Breckenridge, as the mother, and Lauren Worsham, as her daughter, Lisa. In Act III, the mother has what amounts to a mad scene, recalling her twenty years with her husband and ending up lying prone on the dining-room table. Breckenridge has a commanding voice with a
splendid high register.
Opera News

The vocal cast is uniformly fine, with particularly moving work from … Marnie Breckenridge as Lisa’s mother, whose emotional and physical reserves diminish along with the rations dropped from an unseen military helicopter.
New York Times, Steve Smith
Montclair Peak Performances, NJ

CUNEGONDE
Candide

Marnie Breckenridge is the leading light on stage. As Cunegonde, the much-abused but far from blameless heroine, she deploys her sparkling soprano to create an evolving character. The callow chirpiness of a young woman whose dreams of marriage are all pearls, marble halls and costume balls gives way to the frantic bel canto feats of "Glitter and Be Gay" and a growing depth of insight and darkening tone of the second act. Her voice matures, as Cunegonde does, along the way. Only Breckenridge holds her own completely in this disappointing revival. "We live now for what we are" as she puts it near the end. Her transformation from brittle schoolgirl to soulless courtesan to new wife bravely uncertain of the future is complete.
San Francisco Chronicle
Festival Opera

The test for any Cunegonde is "Glitter and be Gay" as treacherous a piece as that reserved for the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Zauberflöte, with its rapid demands for high E-flats, high Cs and D-flats. Breckenridge was note perfect.
The Prague Post
Prague State Opera

Marnie Breckenridge's major-league Cunegonde with a knockout "Glitter and Be Gay" even against the director's determined efforts to sabotage the singer - forcing audience laughter in all the wrong places.
San Francisco Classical Voice
Festival Opera

As his Cunegonde, soprano Marnie Breckenridge boasts diamond-bright tone and assured comic presence; her agile performance of the coloratura aria "Glitter and Be Gay" was the evening's showstopper.
Contra Costa Times
Festival Opera

Breckenridge makes a sparkling Cunegonde. As the show's central female and object of Candide's affections, Breckenridge's contributions prove indispensable to the production's musical high points. In her prize number, "Glitter and Be Gay," Breckenridge was electric, charging into the song's stylistic variations and virtuosities with guileless aplomb.
San Jose Mercury News
West Bay Opera

LUCIA
Lucia di Lammermoor

So much facility with the lyricism of the “bel canto” singing style…long-lined melodies were sweet indeed.
The Indianapolis Star
Indianapolis Opera

As Lucia, Ms. Breckenridge was willing to take risks with her stunning bel canto technique, and those risks paid off richly. Her voice was as powerful as it was lovely, her acting was convincing, and her performance of the extraordinary "Mad Scene"; -- "Il dolce suono, Ardon gli incensi and Spargi d'amaro pianto" -- was brilliant.
The Almanac
West Bay Opera

And Breckenridge is superb. In this 20-minute excursion into madness, she holds the audience in thrall with "Il dolce suono."
Her long cadenza with the flute in the stratosphere of her exquisite voice was simply dazzling.
Insider Bay Area
West Bay Opera

“Her voice can be described as haunting and exquisitely tailored for the rigors of Lucia. Her aria, “Regnava nel silenzio” sets the tone for an evening of highlights. In Lucia’s mad scene, she hits all the high notes with precision and panache. She delivers a magnificent performance, alternately shocking and heartbreaking.
Press-Register
Mobile, Alabama

GILDA
Rigoletto

Gilda was sung with convincing naivete by soprano Marnie Breckenridge. She launched the stratospheric phrases of “Caro nome” with appealing urgency and brought a vivid sense of poignancy and shame to “Tutte le feste.”
San Francisco Chronicle
Festival Opera

PAPAGENA
Die Zauberflöte

Marnie Breckenridge a picture of avian romance as Mrs. Bird-catcher, Papagena.
San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Opera

The perky Papagena, Marnie Breckenridge, was a perfect consort for the bird catcher.
Opera Japonica
San Francisco Opera

Marnie Breckenridge’s is the pert Papagena, the bird-woman he has long yearned for.
The Bay City News
San Francisco Opera

His Act 2 patter duet is an endearing comic tour de force as it is for North Bay Opera alumna soprano Marnie Breckenridge, portraying his female bird-catching counterpart, Papagena. Her leap into his arms at the end of the scene is delightful relief from the opera's more serious themes.
The Vacaville Reporter
San Francisco Opera

PAMINA
The Magic Flute

As Princess Pamina, Marnie Breckenridge offers a clear, resonant voice. Her melancholy second-act aria, in which she considers ending it all, was completely disarming.
Indianapolis Star
Indianapolis Opera

Although there was little magic to watch, there was plenty to hear. Breckenridge and Holmes sang with admirable beauty and she with touching restraint, he with heroic intensity.
Opera News
Indianapolis Opera

Marnie Breckenridge's Pamina delivered an accomplished dramatic performance with bright singing.”
Metro News
West Bay Opera

EMILY
Our Town

The cast was first-rate from top to bottom. Soprano Marnie Breckenridge and tenor Thomas Glenn were heartbreakingly young and spry as Emily and George, their clear, pure singing expressive of everything hopeful and vital.
San Francisco Chronicle
Festival Opera

GRETEL
Hansel and Gretel

As Gretel Marnie Breckenridge’s purity of sound imbued her character with innocence and charm.
The Arizona Republic
Arizona Opera

BERKELEY SYMPHONY
CANTANTRIX SOPRANICA

Nagano conducted crisply, with a keen sense of the absurd, and the demanding vocal parts were superbly handled by sopranos Marnie Breckenridge and Nikki Einfeld and countertenor Paul Flight. Breckenridge went the extra mile by injecting a stream of theatrical smiles and gestures that made the performance come fully alive...
San Francisco Chronicle
Berkeley Symphony

STEPHANIE
Jake Heggie's To Hell and Back

Substituting for soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, who canceled due to bronchitis, Breckenridge was an ethereal Stephanie. Her voice shone as she sang of the wildflowers she had gathered for her wedding bouquet, and then her mood darkened as she asked, "How does a girl of dreams become a queen of hell?"
Chicago Sun Times
Ravinia Festival, Philharmonia Baroque and Patti LuPone

Ms. Breckenridge looks like a youthful Meryl Streep, and sounded as gorgeous as she looked, achieving both lyrical poignancy and dramatic power.”
Chicago Tribune
Ravinia Festival, Philharmonia Baroque and Patti LuPone

SOLOIST
Festival Del Sole

Her voice of peaches and cream, produced brilliantly and without effort and with a preternaturally gorgeous appearance…the Bay Area’s secret treasure.  
San Francisco Examiner
Festival Del Sole concert with Frederica von Stade

NELLE
Chrysalis

Her Nelle not only looks the part – and how many opera singers are plausible as a chemically invented paragon of beauty? – she also brings plenty of vocal fireworks and even a measure of eerie vulnerability to the role.
San Francisco Chronicle
Berkeley Opera

LAURIE
The Tenderland

This production would not have been the compelling, touching and yes, TENDER piece that it was without Marnie Breckenridge as Laurie. Of course she is beautiful and her singing is fantastic, however, she was able to fill this role with youthful exuberance and naiveté. When she realized the control exerted on her by the Moss “family values” her sense of betrayal was palpable to the audience. Her voice easily carried over Copeland’s score.
San Francisco Classical Voice
Trinity Lyric Opera

MUSETTA
La bohème

Marnie Breckenridge, now apparently the busiest singer around, was the statuesque and stormy Musetta.
SFCV
Fremont Opera

With a consummate singing and acting technique firmly in tow, Marnie Breckenridge’s Musetta is a sensuously sexy seductress, a kind of operatic Marilyn Monroe. Her soaring soprano rings true for a vivacious ‘Waltz Song’ that’s as suggestive and fun as it’s beautifully sung.
Nevada Events – Jack Neal’s Theatre Reviews
Nevada Opera

CORILLA SATINECCHI
Viva la Mamma

In ‘Viva la Mamma,’ soprano Marnie Breckenridge is Corilla Sartinecchi… Not only does she have a richly controlled and lovely voice throughout her vocal registers, she has a knockout comedic sense. She parodies this operatic stereotype, especially in a drawn-out cadenza that drives the other waiting performers up the walls.
San Mateo County Times
West Bay Opera

BABY DOE
The Ballad of Baby Doe

Soprano Marnie Breckenridge of Napa sang luminously in the title character role.
The Vacaville Reporter
North Bay Opera