In early December, after the final two performances of Richard Strauss’ Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Metropolitan Opera, something out of the ordinary happened. Amid the thunderous cheers when South African-born soprano Elza van den Heever—who had just sung the title role—appeared for her solo bow, a shower of confetti made from torn-up programs rained down on the stage from high up in the opera house. This rarely offered (if officially frowned-upon) tribute marked a seismic advance in the local appreciation of a versatile performer who had been sensational as the Kaiserin in the splashy Frau revival. Van den Heever had ascended to true Met stardom! As the vigorous applause continued, the soprano admitted she was at first confused, then “gobsmacked” by the surprising confetti tribute. “Receiving love and appreciation from an audience is truly one of the best feelings in the world,” she told Observer.
On April 29, the soprano’s triple-Strauss Met season continues with the title role in an eagerly-awaited new production of Salome, the composer’s riveting early one-act shocker drawn from Oscar Wilde’s purple adaptation of the lurid Biblical story of a capricious young girl who demanded the beheading of John the Baptist as payment for her provocative dance for King Herod. Long delayed by pandemic closures and the resulting scheduling chaos, the production will mark the Met debut of noted German director Claus Guth, whose work has only previously been seen in New York when he and tenor Jonas Kaufmann collaborated on Doppelganger at the Park Avenue Armory several years ago.
Over the course of several refreshingly frank conversations, van den Heever shared reflections on her career and why the music of Strauss has proven so special to her. “I love how his music, in learning it, makes me a smarter individual, and I feel like I am embraced in a hug that lasts for all of the hours the piece is long,” she said. “Strauss makes me feel loved and like I am part of a world that is supernatural and extremely special.”
Since her Met debut in 2012 as Elizabeth I in the opera house’s premiere of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda (for which she shaved her head to emulate the Virgin Queen’s signature look), the soprano has shone there in operas from Handel and Mozart to Wagner and Berg. “I have been very lucky in my early life to have had mentors who insisted that I keep the versatility in my instrument alive and well.” Wholly trained in the U.S., van den Heever arrived at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at age eighteen as a mezzo soprano pursuing first her bachelor’s, then a master’s. While she was in the Merola Opera Program at the San Francisco Opera, Dolora Zajick took the young singer aside to tell her she wasn’t a mezzo after all but a soprano—one her future manager, Matthew Epstein, would dub “the real deal.”
To the astonished, newly annointed soprano, Epstein laid out his vision for her: a steady, patient path in which she would “make haste slowly.” When she was just 25, he predicted that she had the potential to conquer the lyric dramatic roles in which she’s now enjoying wild acclaim at many of the world’s major opera houses. During her formative years at the Frankfurt opera, she solidified her technique by first taking on Mozart and bel canto operas like Norma and Anna Bolena. She also dipped into Puccini as Giorgetta in Il Tabarro for a staging by Guth that was her introduction to regietheater, a non-traditional approach to opera that proved a revelation to the rising singer. She realized that she didn’t want to perform in “boring” productions but ones that stimulated both performers and audiences.
Epstein believes that the challenges stemming from her dyslexia, combined with her quiet determination, have created an artist supremely prepared to conquer demanding German roles like the Kaiserin and Salome (the latter persona is on stage for nearly all of the opera’s 110 minutes). “It’s all about patience and hard, long hours in the practice room,” van den Heever said. “Like any athlete, we as singers have to train our muscles to be able to build up the stamina it requires to sing those long, difficult monologues. Pacing is also about fueling your body properly and staying hydrated!”
Normally, van den Heever prepares her roles with coaches who are experts on the opera she’s learning. They were particularly helpful last year, as Frau was “the most difficult singing I have ever done.” But the lockdown of 2020 meant that she had to work on Salome by herself in the small French village she calls home. When she wasn’t immersed in Strauss, she became one of the pandemic’s most surprising social media breakout stars when she began to regularly post photos of her extraordinary cakes. Since resuming performing, the singer still carves out time to exercise her baking muscles for delicious, if dangerous-looking, Salome-themed creations. For her role debut in Paris, she proffered the prophet’s severed head to her thousands of Instagram followers. More recently in New York, she baked up a remarkably detailed pomegranate like the one to which Salome lasciviously compares the red mouth of Jochanaan—a fruit prominently featured in promotional posters and clips the Met has created anticipating van den Heever’s Salome.
She is reticent to divulge too many spoilers about the upcoming Met production, which will reunite van den Heever with—as the doomed Jochanaan—Swedish baritone peter mattei, her partner in William Kentridge’s 2019 Met Wozzeck. She would say that she believes Guth is creating a very sympathetic portrait of Salome, and that when opera companies hire her for the role, they’re getting a “six-foot, lumpy” soprano unsuited for a striptease to the celebrated Dance of the Seven Veils. Guth’s vision of that crucial episode features six “mini-Salomes” from age eight and up, who share the dance with van den Heever and a double for Herod, her leering stepfather.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Music Director, praised “her voice as truly one of a kind—vibrant, crystal clear, and yet powerfully expressive. Elza is the consummate artist, and her star quality is undeniable.” In 2018 Nézet-Séguin was on the podium for Elektra, both his and van den Heever’s first Strauss opera in New York. As Chrysothemis, she stole the show by bringing to startlingly vivid life the heart-wrenching fears of the protagonist’s younger sister with soaring, gleaming high notes that are the essential attributes of a true Strauss soprano. He then led both her first Kaiserin in concert in Europe just before the pandemic, as well as last fall’s Met Frau run, and he will again be in charge of the new Salome.
At Carnegie Hall in June, he and van den Heever will conclude their Strauss season with a Met Orchestra concert featuring five favorite orchestral songs including “Zueignung” and “Cäcilie” because Nézet-Séguin believes “Elza is the ideal artist to bring [Strauss’ works] to life.” Before she appears that evening, the orchestra will play a suite from Der Rosenkavalier, so I asked her if she has her eye on the Marschallin, that opera’s heroine. She demurred, shaking her head as she replied, “Not yet!” But she does have her eye on the title role of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos, an opera in which she appeared earlier in her career as the boyish Composer.
But for now, she is “finally at a place in my career where I can start to repeat roles!” Salome at the Met follows a controversial 2022 Paris production by American director Lydia Steier that featured the diva vigorously straddling Herod during the Dance of the Seven Veils. What van den Heever and Guth have in store for that eagerly anticipated sequence and the rest of Salome will be revealed on April 29, with seven more performances continuing through May 24. The Saturday matinee on May 17 will be transmitted in HD to theaters worldwide, which the soprano is grateful for—her parents in South Africa, along with thousands of other people, will be watching.
When I shared that it was disappointing that she won’t be appearing with the Met next season, she winked and whispered, “I’ll be back!”
