Press for Lord of Cries with Odyssey Opera and Boston Modern Orchestra Project
“Leah Brzyski, Rachel Blaustein and Felicia Gavilanes – manage their unnatural harmonies as though they were the most natural thing in the world.” – Gramophone, 2023
“Leah Brzyski, Rachel Blaustein, and Felicia Gavilanes are wickedly mischievous, their voices interweaving in playful counterpoint or blending into an inhuman super-voice.” – San Francisco Classical Voice, 2023
“As the ‘odd sisters,’ sopranos Leah Brzyski and Rachel Blaustein, and mezzo-soprano Felicia Gavilanes sang with hypnotic tonal blend and stratospheric range. Their collective sense of character—by turns playful, cunning, and alluring—was spot-on.” -Boston Classical Review
“Even better were Leah Brzyski, Rachel Blaustein, and Felicia Gavilanes as the three sisters, eerie and prophetic in their amalgamation of Dracula’s vampire women and Euripides’s crazed maenads.” - The Boston Globe
Press for The Handmaid's Tale with Boston Lyric Opera
Felicia Gavilanes as The Double (Offred in the Time Before)
“Mezzo Felicia Gavilanes played her flashback double with touching vulnerability; the two singers [Gavilanes and Jennifer Johnson Cano] blended wonderfully in Ruders’s ingenious duo scene centring on the character’s beloved daughter, in which they complete each other’s sentences and even words.” - Opera Magazine
“Felicia Gavilanes was sensitive and impassioned as Offred's past self.”
-Opera News, July 2019
“Felicia Gavilanes brought a poignant innocence to Offred in the Time Before.”
“Felicia Gavilanes as Offred in flashbacks also brought considerable pathos to her role. Her duet with Johnson Cano — as they recall her lost daughter — is a well-rendered and emotionally moving highlight.”
“When Offred laments her lost child with a memory of her past self (mezzo Felicia Gavilanes), the duo’s voices grasp in keen desperation, trading syllables seamlessly.”
Boston Lyric Opera’s Powerful “Handmaid’s Tale” Lands Close to Home
May 6, 2019
“In one of the more moving moments of the afternoon, she and Felicia Gavilanes, Offred’s younger self in the “Time Before” flashbacks, duetted in the second act, yearning and questioning from opposite corners of the stage, finishing each other’s thoughts, but achieving no resolution.”
“Mr. Ruders’s score is oppressive… it lets up barely at all, except for a remarkably tender, second-act duet between Offred and her past self about her love for a daughter lost to the regime.”
“Ms. Cano was also especially moving in the interior dialogue with her earlier self, as was Felicia Gavilanes, who played the Offred of her earlier life.”
“Most striking and moving of all is the substantial scene late in the second act in which Offred encounters (in memory) her younger self… and the two women sing a spare yet warm duet.”
-The Boston Musical Intelligencer
Handmaid’s Tale Does Atwood’s Novel Proud
“In particular, the second-act duet between Offred and her younger pre-Gilead self proved incredibly heartbreaking.”
“Soprano Caroline Worra (an enforcer Aunt), soprano Chelsea Basler (the rebellious Moira), tenor Jesse Darden(Offred’s Time Before husband), and mezzo-soprano Felicia Gavilanes (Offred’s double, from the Time Before) all supported with distinctive voices...
“The flashback style works in some ways, as in a poignant duet, sung by Offred and her Time Before double.”
-Classical Voice North America
“Offred, portrayed passionately by mezzo-sopranos Jennifer Johnson Cano and Felicia Gavilanes, has been thrust into an oppressed, abusive world where she must face impossible decisions.”
“In true Ruders fashion, the score is often at its most unapologetically beautiful during some of the most heinous moments onstage….This reaches an apotheosis in Offred’s duet with her double from the Time Before, portrayed by mezzo soprano Felicia Gavilanes… It’s one of the most touching moments in this score.”
Press for L’Italiana in Algeri with Winter Opera St. Louis
"Felicia Gavilanes does splendid work as Zulma, Elvira's chief Lady-In-Waiting." -KDHX Radio
"Felicia Gavilanes puts her fine mezzo-soprano instrument to good use in the role of Elvira’s dutiful servant Zulma." -Ladue News
Press for Le Nozze di Figaro with Boston Lyric Opera
"As the Bridesmaids, Felicia Gavilanes and Emma Sorenson were charming." -Berkshire Fine Arts