"Opera choice: Vanessa is a great American masterpiece. Not just because of Samuel Barber's luscious score ... but also the immaculate libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, with its chilling sense of mystery. Here now is the production and cast that Vanessa has been waiting for ... A staircase worthy of film noir and, behind the fashionably distressed grand sofas and salon chairs, a dark brooding forest. Human hearts are gripped by ice here ... Virginia Verrez is magnificent as Erika ... Rosalind Plowright is a knowing but haughty Baroness, and Edgara Montvidas oozes boyish charm as Anatol. But it's Emma Bell's Vanessa that holds your eyes and ears. Passionate, trusting, fearful and deluded, she never puts an elegant 1950s foot wrong from the opening ... Bell and the whole cast are admirably served by Jakub Hrusa conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra"

"Vurdering: Diapason d'or"

"Editor's choice: Warner's handsome and perceptive staging of Barber's Vanessa has probably done more to silence the work's naysayers than any in recent memory ... Thanks to Warner's perception and motivation this excellent cast really deliver ... Shadowy, opulent, effulgent - Barber's Vanessa is the opera that bridges Hollywood and the Broadway stage"

"Recording of the week: Ashley Martin-Davis's sets and costumes reflect the tension between 'dirt and elegance' which Warner sees as central to the piece, as well as its preoccupation with illusion and ambivalence: this is a quite literally a world of smoke and mirrors, where everything has seen better days and perspectives can shift in the blink of an eye ... The entire cast seems to feed off Bell's nervous energy in the title-role: to borrow a line from Sunset Boulevard (one of several 1950s films obliquely referenced in the production), everyone here is ready for their close-up"

"So hat es Keith Warner ... inszeniert: als schwarze Komödie in edelmürbem Ambiente über zu viel liebende Frauen in den besten Jahren ... Die französische Mezzosopranistin Virginie Verrez sing mit Gusto die leicht hysterische Nichte Erika ... Emma Bell ist die kurzeitig wieder zu Gefühlen erblühende, eigentlich früh vertrocknete Vanessa, und Rosalind Plowright macht aus der ziemlich abgebrühten Baroness eine grandios alte Opernschachtel. Warmherzig und aufmerksam begleitet wird das vom London Philharmonic Orchestra, das der tschechische Dirigent Jakub Hrusa mit herrlichen Zwischentönen aufblühen lässt: Barber vergoldet"