“There is, thankfully, much human emotion in Elizabeth Llewelyn’s luminous portrayal of Desdemona. Llewellyn’s luscious brandy-and-cream soprano is perfectly produced from the top to the bottom of her voice. She has the vocal heft to ride the huge ensemble at the end of Act Three and still scale down to a poised and heartbreaking ‘Willow Song’ and ‘Ave Maria’ in the final scene as she waits for Otello to come to her bedchamber.”

— Culture Whisper

“…Elizabeth Llewellyn’s gorgeously sung, unendurably moving Desdemona.”

— Opera

“Elizabeth Llewellyn’s Desdemona has superb top notes of unearthly directness and purity”

— The Telegraph

“Poised between sweetness and dignity, Elizabeth Llewellyn plays a beautifully judged Desdemona.”

— Financial Times

“Thanks to Llewellyn’s warm, huge, creamily lush soprano, she never sounded like a timid, girlish victim of hatred and calumny.”
“In the second half, Llewellyn glowed and even burned. With a soul-searing Willow Song and Ave Maria, she managed to thin out that usually luscious, smoky and velvet-plush sound into a clear, pure beam of innocent sorrow. The spectrum of feeling and intonation in her “Salces” delivered a dramatic-soprano masterclass in itself. As Otello arrived to complete his mad design, her angelic top notes floated heartbreakingly into an abyss of pain.”

— The ArtsDesk

“Desdemona, the collateral damage of his scheme to destroy her husband, was Elizabeth Llewellyn, gracious and touching in her brief happy moments, then bewildered, shocked and terrified as her fate unfolded. All these emotions were there in her voice and movement. If her spinto tone was a bit too generous in a small house for the simple Willow Song, almost everywhere else her singing was lustrous, not least in the Act 1 love duet.”

— Bachtrack

“Always dressed in white, Llewellyn initially may appear too stately and noble in voice and posture… Everything changes with her heartbreaking Willow Song and prayer in Act IV: magnificent music magnificently sung, hot on the heels of an Act III ensemble finale of stunning excitements.”

— The Times

“Simon Keenlyside excelled as Verdi’s manifestation of the Shakespearian monster and, as so often happens, threatens to overshadow even the title role. However, with Gwyn Hughes Jones and Elizabeth Llewellyn in scintillating form this was very much a performance with three stars soaring.

Elizabeth Llewellyn’s burnished soprano delivered a performance rich in pathos, thrilling and heart-breaking in equal measure. She too had the ability to deliver soaring power and fragility when Verdi demands. While those top notes thrilled, the purity of voice was at its most pleasing in an exquisite Ave Maria.”

— Opera Scene

“Llewellyn is every inch the gracious, then terrified and finally forgiving wife – her innocence mirrored by the image of the Virgin Mary that periodically appears only to be desecrated by Cassio and Iago. Llewellyn’s soprano brings a broad lustre to Desdemona, perhaps too broad in her Act One duet with Jones, but by the Willow Song, where things have moved up several gears emotionally, …a range of colours and shadings emerge: cream at the top, bronze in the middle and copper below. No matter that the timbres don’t match, the effect is glorious and her ‘Ave Maria’ one of the most angelic I’ve heard – its bone-china purity a thing of wonder.”

— Opera Today

“Our sympathies lie with Elizabeth Llewellyn’s Desdemona and it even more thought-provoking to watch this Otello belittle, bully and abuse her. With just a hint of a vibrato, there was a sincerity, a pureness of tone and a flexibility of phrasing exactly as singing Verdi requires. Alden has Llewellyn’s Desdemona have an inner strength whilst clearly the odds are against her. Llewellyn was at her very best – and angelic in all senses of the word since she was always in white – in Act IV as she recognised her death was approaching, her ‘Willow Song’ was plangent and plaintive and her ‘Ave Maria’ dignified, profoundly moving and emotional.”

— Seen & Heard International

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