REVIEWS
Photo credit: Rob Davidson
REVIEWS for The HUNT
"...a darkly funny fairy tale...the work adds up to something that few would qualify as absolutely an opera or a musical, or even a play with music – but, in classic Soper fashion, none of them and all of them at once."
The New York Times (full review)
"The Hunt's strongest argument for the possibility of growth, connection, and agency even under adverse and restrictive circumstances lay, of course, in its music, in which three individual voices were able to combine and transform into something infinitely rich and strange."
Parterre Box (full review)
a "brilliantly inventive chamber opera...wholly original, composed fluidly to straddle the medieval and contemporary without falling into the trap of imitation."
Seen and Heard International (full review)
"A "sly and satisfying new chamber opera from Kate Soper, whose work has been at contemporary opera's vanguard for the past decade...suggestively tying questions about women, representation and patriarchy together with a welcome light touch."
Observer (full review)
A "fresh and witty new chamber opera...Soper's score and libretto function on several levels, offering pleasures for the eye and ear and ample food for thought.""
Classical Voice America (full review)
Photo credit: JJ Geiger for Long Beach Opera.
REVIEWS for The ROMANCE of the ROSE
"Soper mobilizes the entire thousand-year history of music...I came away all the more convinced that [she] is a major music-theatre talent."
The New Yorker, 3/6/23 (full review)
"Tender, whip-smart .... with earnestness, wit, whimsy, self-awareness and music that ranges freely among Baroque madrigals, power ballads and barbed modernism."
The New York Times, 2/20/23 (full review)
"....to leave the theater dazed by a new opera is one thing. To be still processing where the humor ends and the meaning begins, even after time to reflect, is another much rarer and more valuable thing."
The LA Times, 2/23/23 (full review)
Photo credit: Claudia GorriREVIEWS for Orchestra Orpheus Opus Onus
“Dudamel Unveils a Love Letter to the Philharmonic”
The New York Times (full review)
“The Best Classical Music of 2025, So Far”
The New York Times (full review)
“Kate Soper’s “Orpheus Orchestra Opus Onus” World Premiere at New York Philharmonic” (2025) Symphony Magazine (full review)
“The NY Phil premieres Kate Soper, revisits Stravinsky, and takes percussion to Glass” (2025) Bachtrack (full review)
“Paradox, Irony, and Eruptions” (2025) ConcertoNet (full review)
“A Season-Ending Crescendo with Gustavo Dudamel and the New York Philharmonic” (2025) Feast of Music (full review)
Photo credit: Eric Brucker / EMPAC Rensselaer
REVIEWS for IPSA DIXIT
“Philosophers Agree: IPSA DIXIT Is a Hoot”
San Francisco Classical Voice, 6/4/24 (full review)
“IPSA DIXIT - a stunning breakthrough in the reality of postopera”
New Classic LA, 7/6/24 (full review)
"Ambitious, ingeneous .... what she's doing is enacting the polarities out of which art emerges." The New York Times, 10/29/18 (full review)
"....comprehensively astounding.....a twenty-first century masterpiece."
The New Yorker, 2/20/17 (full review)
"....fertile fascination....dazzlingly varied....engages you instantly on contact, and then keeps you thinking, reflecting, admiring, and drawing new conclusions long after."
The Log Journal, 2/6/17 (full review)
REVIEWS for epithets
“William Gibson and Athena among the inspirations for new Wet Ink Ensemble works”
Backtrack, 8/14/24 (full review)
Review for
Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say
NO! Makes for a Simple, Powerful Statement at the LA Phil”
San Francisco Classical Voice, 5/5/25 (full review)
Photo credit: Noah Arjomand
REVIEWS for Here Be Sirens
"...inspired and strangely powerful...no one interested in smudging the boundaries of contemporary opera and theater should miss it."
The New York Times, 9/7/14 (full review)
"...brainy, baffling, consistently astounding..."
The New York Times, 1/22/14 (full review)
"...audacious, genre-bending music theatre..."
The Wall Street Journal, 9/8/14 (full review)
"...the fact that no one superlative seems to suffice is testament to how human a work Soper has managed to create..." I Care If You Listen, 1/21/14 (full review)
"...Erudite, hilarious, furiously inventive..."
New Yorker Magazine, 2/3/14 (article on the Prototype Festival)
Photo credit: Tomiko Jones
REVIEWS for Voices From the Killing Jar
"...epic. It's the kind of piece that, if you were to see it performed live, there would be a slight gap between the end of the piece and the applause when the widespread gasps would make it sound as if this imaginary world has just escaped, leaving behind a slightly altered world." WQXR, 1/12/14 (full review)
"...the work seems driven by curiosity, by a yearning to understand....an absolutely compelling recording." I Care if You Listen, 4/20/14 (full review)
"...keen intelligence; lacerating wit; a time-traipsing style with extravagant sounds extracted from frugal resources; and, not least, Ms. Soper’s lithe voice and riveting presence." New York Times - ArtsBeat, 4/23/14 (full review)
REVIEWS for my album “The Romance of the Rose”
”Album of the Week'“ Night after Night (full review)
“New In Music This Week: November 15th”
Cultural Attaché, 11/15/24 (full review)
“Post-identity music: Schell’s Picks for 2024”
Sequenza 21 (full review)
Misc REVIEWS
”[Soper's] work is consistently imaginative, complex, fascinating to hear and see performed...” New York Classical Review, 11/17/15 ((full review)
"....a composer of trenchant, sometimes discomfiting, power."
The Boston Globe, 7/7/14 (full review)
"Soper...gasped, screamed, whispered, and babbled....It was a shuddering, full-body performance." Pitchfork Magazine, 4/24/12 (full review)
"[The Wet Ink Ensemble] is fearless in testing the limitations of what instruments or musical forms can be....That played out powerfully in the unnerving but entrancing two movements from Voices From the Killing Jar...."
The San Francisco Classical Voice, 11/14/11 (full review)
"....an exquisitely quirky setting of six poems by Martha Collins."
The New York Times, review of Door, 6/17/10 (full review)
"....now is forever is downright lush at times....but with a depiction more of invisible ether waves in the ether than anything oceanic. Any number of line readings....suggested the emergence of a first-class dramatist."
Artsjournal, 1/22/13 (full review)
INTERVIEWS / ARTICLES
“On Shame: Kate Soper’s Hermeneutics” (Van Magazine, 2024)
“Influences and Inspirations” (Symphony Magazine, 2025)
"Kate Soper Returns to Opera with a Story Medieval and Modern" (The New York Times, 2023)
"An Eagerly Awaited Opera, Delayed by the Pandemic, Opens at Last" (The New York Times, 2023)
"Sam's Going to the Diner at Noon: Living the Composer's Life" (Sound American, 2022)
"From Medieval Romance to Contemporary Opera: Philosophy, Eros, Allegory" (PAJ, 2022) interview and libretto excerpt
"Kate Soper Revisits 'Voices from the Killing Jar'" (Cultural Attache, 2021)
”New York Festival of Song” (Artist of the Month Interview, 2019)
"Five Questions to Kate Soper About Ipsa Dixit" (I Care if You Listen, October 2018)
An interview with Kate Soper (Believer Magazine, 2018)
"She tackled Aristolte in an opera. Next up: Medieval French couplets" (The New York Times, 2018)
"Kate Soper on IPSA DIXIT" (AXS, 2017)
"Kate Soper: Real Communication" (New Music Box, 2016), video interview and article
"Composer Profile: Kate Soper" (Musicakaleidoscope, 2016)
"Kate Soper Brings Dramatic Potency to Tanglewood" (The Boston Globe, 2014)
PODCASTS
Miller Theater: Mission Commission Season 2 (2021) listen
Lexical Tones Episode 107 (2019) listen
Adagio for Things S2E6: Clapping Music (2019) listen (interview begins ca. 29')
Between Singing and Speaking (The Organist, October 2018) listen
Stage/Monodrama • Vocal [ Voice plus one • Voice(s) and Ensemble ] • Large Ensemble • Small Ensemble • Multimedia • Misc
Please contact me if you would like to perform something not published here.