Cantin was in glorious voice, glowing richer and brighter the higher it rises – a voice perfect for the flights of coloratura Verdi gives the singer as well as its lyric passages. Her stunning account of Lady Macbeth’s first aria was greeted with such loud and long applause it was clear that any disappointment at not hearing [the originally scheduled artist] had evaporated.
We all wanted to hear Cantin.
We all wanted to hear Cantin.
STAGE DOOR
As Lady Macbeth, Cantin made a successful role debut, bringing both power and lyricism to her music. While not fully a dramatic soprano, Cantin has sufficient vocal heft to do justice to the climactic moments, and sang a particularly memorable sleepwalking scene.
OPERA Magazine
Alternando en la parte de Lady Macbeth, una muy grata sorpresa resultó la prometedora soprano canadiense Tracy Cantin quien hizo gala de una voz de importante calidad,
un canto noble y entregada interpretación.
Alternating in the part of Lady Macbeth, a very pleasant surprise was the promising Canadian soprano Tracy Cantin who displayed a voice of important quality, a noble singing and dedicated interpretation.
PRO ÓPERA
Tracy Cantin was a marvelous Micaëla, especially in vocal terms; her voice is clear and strong, but also beautiful, and she has a terrific top register. The first-act duet, one of the best things in the score, was effective in every way, making one wonder why on earth
Don José would choose Carmen over her.
OPERA CANADA
No one sang better than soprano Tracy Cantin as Donna Elvira, the cast-off lover who responded to the Catalogue Song by seizing a bottle of wine and glugging it. Cantin impressed with her judicious displays of vocal heft, offering thrilling upper-register forays that filled the theatre, elsewhere navigating soft passages with exquisite control and a purring vibrato.
TIMES COLONIST
The luckless Donna Elvira was played by soprano Tracy Cantin. Rather than portraying Elvira as a desperate dupe, Cantin brought the gravitas of a traumatized survivor to the difficult role. With beautiful clarion high notes, her precise and effortless handling of “Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata” brought well-earned cheers from the audience.
SCHMOPERA
Notable, moreover, was Canadian soprano Tracy Cantin. While perhaps not yet a true Wagnerian soprano, she sounded phenomenal in Brünnhilda's powerful monologue.
LA NACIÕN
The four soloists brought in for [Verdi's Requiem] displayed superb musicianship as well as control of vocal technique. Soprano Tracy Cantin was dazzling in her projection over chorus and orchestra. Her final libera me was heartfelt and gorgeous.
VERNON STAR
Tracy Cantin made a commanding impact [in Bernstein's Songfest],
her soprano cutting through the texture excitingly.
her soprano cutting through the texture excitingly.
SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL
Cantin has an exceptionally fine lyric soprano of beauty, volume, and flexibility, and she uses it with discerning taste, sensitivity and musicality. The timbre is sweet, and tone beautifully focused, evenly produced throughout its range, backed by a solid technique.
Combine that with a youthful, attractive stage presence and the requisite dramatic acuity, one can understand why she is a singer to watch.
LUDVIG VAN TORONTO
Only in her early 30’s, Cantin, essentially unknown in Toronto, wowed everyone with her COC debut in the title role. She sang Anna with beauty, sweetness, volume, and flexibility, an exceptional achievement for a singer still near the beginning of her career, in a role as daunting as Anna Bolena.
LUDVIG VAN TORONTO
In a refreshing twist, a taste of something new actually came in the more traditional piece in the spring season. The night I attended Anna Bolena, superstar soprano Sondra Radvanovsky was ill, replaced presumably with little notice by a young Canadian completely unknown to the prickly Four Seasons Centre crowd who audibly groaned in disappointment at the news of Radvanovsky’s absence. Thrown into a strong cast including the excellent Christian Van Horn as a swaggering Henry, Cantin squared her shoulders and stood her ground and pulled the audience to their feet the second the curtain fell on her epic death. Her versatile soprano and moving emotional work obviously proved up to the technical demands of the performance but there was something special in her unique understudy energy, arming Cantin just this one time in this one place for this one crowd with exactly the highwire vulnerability and defiant “I’ll show’em” spirit that unlocked and explained Anne Boleyn in a whole new way.
MY ENTERTAINMENT WORLD
Canadian Soprano Tracy Cantin Makes Auspicious COC Recital Debut. No question, Cantin has an uncommonly fine lyric soprano, with a clear and pure timbre, very well focused, even up and down the scale, and secure in technique.
LUDVIG VAN TORONTO
The most astonishing vocal performance came from soprano Tracy Cantin, a graduate of the University of Alberta, McGill, and Chicago's Ryan Opera Center, who here was making her Canadian Opera Debut. As Elektra's younger sister, Chrysothemis, Cantin filled the Jubilee Auditorium with robust, yet lyrical sound. She sang with such a strong understanding of her role as the tender heart of the tragic family, winning considerable, well-justified applause from the healthy opening night crowd.
OPERA CANADA
Tracy Cantin, who played Elektra’s sister, absolutely stole every scene she was in. It was more than just her glistening, bright voice—it was the emotive and descriptive passion that simply exuded from every line that she sang. Coupled with her very convincing and engaged physical performance, Tracy Cantin was the absolute highlight of the entire evening.
THE WANDERER
Soprano Tracy Cantin, as Elektra’s younger sister Chrysothemis, was making her Canadian opera debut. What a splendid voice she has, essentially lyrical, but with the power to effortlessly soar over Strauss’ heavy orchestration. She matches that with strong character acting, with such telling touches as the subtle cradling of her arms early on, long before we hear of
her obsession of being a mother.
EDMONTON JOURNAL
Tracy Cantin used her clear, powerful and sumptuous soprano in “Chi il bel sogno di Doretta” from Puccini’s La Rondine. This role suits her voice like a velvet glove! Cantin and Puccini are a perfect fit!
BROOKLYN DISCOVERY
Ryan Opera Center alumna Tracy Cantin as Brünnhilde is a powerful-voiced soprano and wonderful comedian
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
OK, maybe that didn’t actually bring events to a halt. But this did: soprano Tracy Cantin’s entrance from somewhere at the back of the room, Lyric’s intimate rehearsal hall, singing the Valkyrie Brünhilde’s famous battle-cry aria “Ho jo to ho!” Whoa, the genuine article had just arrived – a huge, ringing, glorious voice. Cantin is an alumna of the Lyric’s Ryan Opera Center,
and a stunning credit to the program she is.
CHICAGO ON THE AISLE
Tracy Cantin, a recent alumna of Lyric Opera’s Ryan Opera Center, who not only possesses a spectacular voice, but has the exuberant comic chops for this work, and sets it on fire.
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
The cast consists of a half dozen flawlessly funny Second City veterans and a pair of operatic singers, soprano Tracy Cantin and bass Jonah D. Winston, so accomplished onstage that until they let loose with the megavoices you can't distinguish them from the sketch and improv masters.
CHICAGO READER
Soprano Tracy Cantin is already a fully formed singer who has it all – agility, power and dazzling coloratura. She infused drama and urgency into the duet, ‘Soli noi siamo,” from Gaetano Donizetti’s “Lucrezia Borgia,” providing a fiery conclusion to the first half. And if that were not enough, she returned for a recitative and aria from Charles Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet,” nailing them as well.
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Canadian soprano Tracy Cantin swept audiences with her
gentle rendition of 'Song to the Moon'
HIGHLAND PARK LANDMARK
Duets from the Donizetti opera "Lucrezia Borgia" demonstrated the shining professional potential of Tracy Cantin, a third-year [Ryan Opera Center] soprano, and Richard Ollarsaba, a second-year bass-baritone . . Cantin is a singer who has what opera people call the entire package – vocal and physical allure, with interpretive intelligence and stage presence to boot.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Cantin inspired a torrent of applause for her lustrous account of
Juliette's Act 4 aria from Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette."
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Tracy Cantin summoned a full, gleaming laser-beam of sound, and just the right stoic poise, for the finale [of Danielpour's Darkness in the Ancient Valley].
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Soprano Tracy Cantin is a veteran of power and artistry in the Ryan program, and her 'Allerseelen' (All Soul’s Day) and 'Frühlingsfeier' (Spring Festival)
brought down the house barely a quarter of the way into the evening.
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Canadian soprano Tracy Cantin was spellbinding in Cressida’s recitative and aria from William Walton’s rarely presented 1954 “Troilus and Cressida”, a total performance vocally, physically, emotionally.
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Cantin, a Canadian-born singer of poise and musicality, threw herself into an aria from Walton's "Troilus and Cressida"
with such magnetic intensity as to win a roaring ovation.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
I feel especially compelled to praise Tracy Cantin as the maid Berta:
so great was her finesse and projection... certainly a name to watch from now on!
CHICAGO CRITIC
Bryn Terfel opened the vocal section with stentorian command,
finding a worthy challenge in Tracy Cantin's mobile soprano.
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD