Tara Erraught (Courtesy photo)

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (Mar. 18, 2014)
Diva is not the first word that comes to mind to describe the 27-year-old Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught. Talk to her for 20 minutes on the phone, as I did recently as she walked back to her Munich apartment, and the words that come to mind are hip, peppy, charming, enthusiastic.

If there’s no hauteur in her demeanor, there’s a musical lilt to her speech – amply peppered with words like “cool” and “awesome” — that’s riveting. It apparently translates onstage: critics have fallen over themselves to praise her singing, and as a member of Germany’s Bavarian State Opera (Bayerische Staatsoper) and a guest with other companies, plum mezzo roles have fallen her way – Sesto in Handel’s “La Clemenza di Tito;” Cinderella in Rossini’s “La Cenerentola,” for example.

Erraught (pronounced ErRACKED) makes a return to Glyndebourne this May (Octavian in R. Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier”) and a UK recital debut in April at London’s Wigmore Hall. And before then, there’s a U.S. recital tour, her second, that brings her to Ann Arbor’s Hill Auditorium Thursday under University Musical Society auspices, accompanied by Irish pianist Dearbhla Collins.

Read the rest at MLIVE.COM