Reviews

Der fliegende Holländer, Göteborgsoperan, 2024

“Åsa Jäger shines in The Flying Dutchman”
“The Swedish audience should not miss this; this is a brightly shining star in the Wagnerian sky: passionate, clear with a beautiful dramatic tone”. – Svenska Dagbladet – February 2024

“Åsa Jäger’s blazing vocal interpretation represents a magnificent breakthrough as a Wagnerian singer on a major opera stage”. – Dagens Nyheter – February 2024

“Talk about Wagnerian potential! (…) It’s easy to get lost in the praise for this magnificent voice. It has natural space, volume and richness of colour; as soon as Åsa Jäger opens her mouth, she masters the stage.
It has been something of a tradition since Harry Kupfer’s legendary interpretation of the Dutchman in Bayreuth in 1978 to portray Senta as a hysteric for whom the Dutchman is merely a projection of her inner delusions. Åsa Jäger changes that. With such outstanding freshness in her voice, there is no room for hysteria. Her Senta becomes a kind of feminist triumph over all the dodgy men around her”. Aftonbladet – February 2024

“Åsa Jäger brings impressive weight to Senta. Hers is a Wagnerian voice with enormous promise and she is absolutely on top of it (…) She has the discipline and depth to leave power in reserve for when the drama ratchets up, and thrills in the final emotional torrents, staged with a literal beauty by Talevi”. – Opera Now – February 2024

“Åsa Jäger’s magnificent Wagnerian soprano is perfect for Senta, with excellent projection through her register, an attractive warm timbre and a very free top. She is also a subtle actor, believable in Senta’s teenage swings between obsessive certainty and vulnerbility. Her singing of Senta’s ballad was compelling, and she was no shrinking violet in her duets with the Dutchman. Jäger has already sung Brünnhilde in Germany and should have more Wagner roles soon after her terrific performance in Gothenburg”. – Seen and heard International – February 2024

“Yet the big star of the evening is Åsa Jäger as Senta. Her voice: its clarity and personality – her stage presence – her charisma. From the moment she takes the stage, you are completely immersed. The interplay in the opera’s duets between Senta and Erik, and between Senta and the Dutchman, is fantastic”. – Göteborgsposten – February 2024

“She has been under the radar for far too long, but is now finally on her way to the big roles in the world with her beautiful Wagnerian voice. So free, so rich and wonderfully flowing – this will be Sweden’s new Brünnhilde and Isolde”. – SVT Kultur – February 2024

“But now I come to the most impressive experience. Namely, a newly discovered singer: Åsa Jäger. She plays Daland’s daughter Senta, and she is now visiting the Gothenburg Opera for the first time. Please, readers, memorize the name Åsa Jäger, and remember where you first read about her. For you will hear about her again, rest assured. For a voice like Åsa Jäger’s is nothing but a pure pleasure to listen to. When she burst into her arias, it felt as if everything else in the Gothenburg Opera’s auditorium just ceased to exist. Her voice filled the entire auditorium with an awe-inspiring vocal experience, a voice that both penetrated and enveloped. I felt both pierced and wrapped in cotton. I am captivated. I have a new favorite”! – Scenkonstguiden – February 2024

Siegfried, Landestheater Coburg, 2023

”Here again, Åsa Jäger sang a robust, radiant Brünnhilde, whose seemingly inexhaustible vocal capacities were once again breathtaking”. – Bachtrack – March 2023


”Åsa Jäger’s Brünnhilde legitimises all possible scenic nonchalance. In “Die Walküre” she overwhelmed the audience by her pure vocal presence in the dramatic as well as in the heartfelt phrases, in “Siegfried” she repeats exactly this in “her” scene”. – Der Opernfreund – March 2023


”The Siegfried-Brünnhilde is probably the most difficult of the three Brünnhilde in “Der Ring des Nibelungen”: she has no warm-up phase, must be fully present right away in a challenging vocal range. Åsa Jäger, who already thrilled the Coburg audience as Walküre, shone again this time with her sovereign mastery of this short but difficult role. In addition to the glistening, explosive high notes, the soprano found a dramatically blossoming tone with depth of soul in the lyrical moments”.
 – Neue Presse – March 2023

”With the Swedish Åsa Jäger, a Brünnhilde with a phenomenal voice was on stage in Coburg”. – BR Klassik – March 2023

”This fired up both Åsa Jäger’s energetic as well as luminous Brünnhilde and the general music director Daniel Carter, whose performance in the revival scene with the Philharmonic Orchestra was increasingly lush and indulgent”. – Neue Musikzeitung – March 2023

Die Walküre, Landestheater Coburg, 2022

Alex Ross lists Notable performances and recordings of 2022:

”I spent much of May in Germany, exploring the country’s incomparable network of opera houses. The lesson is much the same as in the American orchestral field: bigger and richer is not necessarily better. In Coburg, a city of forty-one thousand, the young Swedish soprano Åsa Jäger took possession of the mighty role of Brünnhilde, her voice aglow with the confidence of arrival”. – The New Yorker – December 2022


“The vocal discovery of the night was the young Swedish soprano Åsa Jäger, who sang Brünnhilde with clarion tone, crisp diction, and infectious zest. This run of performances marks not only Jäger’s German début but also her début in any Wagner role. I suspect that later in her career she will look back fondly on Coburg, where her ascent began. The ultimate appeal of operagoing in Germany is to see a venerable art form experiencing continuous rebirth”. – The New Yorker – June 2022


 “(…)and with Åsa Jäger there is a great Brünnhilde on the small stage, which many larger houses should envy Coburg. So much tenderness with so much dynamic range and height, so much ladylike, yet youthful vocal elegance with so much dramatic sincerity: this is how a young Brünnhilde must sound”. – Der Opernfreund – June 2022

The cast of soloists is very well balanced with a mixture of in-house forces and a number of guests at a high level with many role debuts. Åsa Jäger as Brünnhilde impresses the premiere audience (…) with her assertive soprano and haunting interpretation (…). – Fränkischer Tag Kritik von Jochen Berger – April 2022

Among the guest soloists, one in particular stood out at the premiere: Åsa Jäger as Brünnhilde. The young Swede not only mastered the role (…) with remarkable verbal comprehensibility, but also sang her very first Hojotoho with such a lively lightness, confidence in the high notes and penetrating power that it was a real joy. She also succeeds in portraying a compelling role that requires concentration, strength, talent and courage. Bravura, a stroke of luck from a Wotan child!
– Bamberg Richard Wagner Verband – April 2022

 “First and foremost, we should mention the young Swedish soprano Åsa Jäger, who lets her luminous voice resound powerfully and expansively as the wild Valkyrie, only to let soft, lyrical tones be heard in the final touching dialogue with the father”. – Neue Presse – April 2022

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