New York – On the Metropolitan Opera’s mammoth stage, lightning flashes. Thunder pounds. The huge stage set slowly turns, revealing on the other side a petite but imposing female figure. Her face is chalk-white; her lips, blood red. Her expression is somehow both composed and fierce. She wears a long white gown, and dramatic wings billow out from her, speckled with what resemble star-like sparks of light.

And then she begins to sing — gorgeously. The tone is rich and full but pristine.

This singer is East Lyme native Kathryn Lewek during a December performance of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at the Metropolitan Opera. She seemed to sing with effortless ability and to be serenely assured in the performance, and for good reason: She has sung the iconic role of the Queen of the Night before. In fact, in 2019, she broke the record as the performer who has played the character the most at the Met, with more than 50 turns over the course of 10 years. (The next two closest are Roberta Peters and Erika Miklosa, at 32 each.) Her performances as the Queen of the Night at the Met now stand at 64.

Lewek starred in the role at other venues, too, meaning she has played the Queen of the Night more than 300 times in total.

“For years, I have called my Queen of the Night my passport role because it’s taken me all over the world,” she said, noting that she has worked at many different opera houses and met many different people and experienced their cultures and traditions. “That’s been an amazing introduction to life on Earth, really – all different places on Earth. I’m definitely grateful to Queen because of that.”

Her version of the Queen of the Night is winning raves. A New York Times critic wrote last May that Lewek’s performance in the premiere of a new version of “The Magic Flute” by Simon McBurney at the Met was “utterly enthralling … bringing thrilling drama to a coloratura showpiece so fiendish that sopranos are lucky to get through it.”

A “New Yorker” writer opined that Lewek “executes this stratospherically difficult role better than anyone alive.”

While the Queen of the Night is Lewek’s signature role, it’s hardly her only one. Her career is flourishing. Among her 2023 performances: She made her debut at the Royal Opera House in London, then did “Lucia di Lammermoor” in the south of France. She went on to Dresden, Germany, to sing a few performances of “The Magic Flute.” She returned to the Met for the spring premiere of the McBurney version of “The Magic Flute.” Over the summer, she sang at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago and the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland.

Message from mother

As for breaking that record at the Met, Lewek learned about it from an unexpected source: her mother.

“It didn’t dawn on me that that was a thing,” Lewek said of the record. “It is kind of a crazy role to sing, so I guess people keep track of those things.”

Her parents, Sue and Dick Blomshield, who still live in East Lyme, heard the information on a radio broadcast they were listening to in 2021.

“My mom texted me, and she goes, ‘Congratulations on being the record holder. I didn’t know that.’ I texted her back: ‘What on Earth are you talking about?’” Lewek said.

Asked what the record means to her, Lewek said, “It’s funny because I really don’t know even what to think.”

Her friend and fellow opera singer Jeni Houser had some good insight for Lewek: that she probably doesn’t know what to think because she is still in the middle of it.

“After it’s over, after I retire the Queen of the Night or maybe at the end of my career and I’m looking back on my life, I’m sure I’ll be able to grasp it a little more and what it means not only to me as an artist but also to the institution of the Met,” Lewek said.

Right now, she’s doing the work of performing and being a very busy working mom. She said, “I’m a one-day-at-a-time kind of person right now.”

She and her husband, Zach Borichevsky, who is an opera singer as well, have 5-year-old daughter Mackenzie and 2-year-old son Charlie. They live in Redding, Conn.

Growing up in East Lyme

Lewek, 40, is far from the only musical person in her family. Her grandmother, Joyce Sparrow Poetter, was an opera singer. Her mother taught piano.

Lewek sang and played piano as a youth. She participated in competition choruses, and she performed in stage musicals. She took acting lessons from the late Lynn Britt and appeared in a few locally shot movies. At one point, she envisioned herself as becoming a Broadway performer, but when she took vocal lessons with Richard Donohue of Cromwell, he encouraged her to try arias in addition to showtunes. She found that she loved singing opera, and it fit her voice well.

After graduating from East Lyme High School, Lewek went on to earn her undergraduate and graduate degrees in vocal performance from the Eastman School of Music.

Her first turn as the Queen of the Night began in an unusual way. Lewek had started out as a mezzo-soprano and worked her way up, exploring different repertoire to see what fit. After starting with voice coach Diana Soviero, Lewek began working on some coloratura repertoire. She went to audition for Deutsche Oper Berlin. She had prepared five coloratura arias, but then Deutsche Oper Berlin’s Christoph Seuferle asked her to sing the Queen of the Night. She said that she didn’t know it and that she was new to this repertoire.

“He sort of rolled his eyes at me. I can confidently say that without offending him because he’s a good friend of mine now. He just loves to tell this story about discovering my Queen of the Night and taking a chance on me. They went to New York to find a Queen of the Night and they hired the only girl who didn’t sing Queen of the Night,” recalled Lewek, who, yes, was hired.

‘My favorite person was you!’

During a December performance at the Met, Lewek brought her virtuosic talent to bear on the Queen of the Night’s renowned and notoriously difficult aria “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" ("Hell's vengeance boils in my heart"). The enthusiastic applause she earned was arguably the most rousing of the night.

The crowd was populated by children as well as adults — this adaptation of “The Magic Flute” is a family-friendly one that is abridged and sung in English (with translation by the late J.D. McClatchy, who was a Stonington resident). The production is from Julie Taymor, best-known for directing the stage version of “The Lion King,” and whimsical puppetry wafted in during “The Magic Flute,” whether in the form of gracefully flying birds or comically dancing bears.

Lewek’s daughter saw the production this year as her first opera. Mackenzie loved the show. When Lewek asked her who her favorite character was — figuring it would be the comic Papageno — Mackenzie “put her palm on her forehead and said, ‘Mommy! My favorite person was you!’ Sort of like, ‘Duh,’” Lewek recalled with a laugh.

Lewek said, “I have pictures of myself nursing her backstage as a 6-week-old newborn baby in full Queen makeup, in my dressing room at the Met. I have (photos of) the following season, when she’s a year old, and then, fast forward, she’s seeing the show for the first time.”

Changing view of the Queen

When The Day interviewed Lewek a decade ago before her first performance as the Queen of the Night at the Met, she compared the character to Cruella De Vil. Her point of view has evolved since then.

She has found more nuance in the character. She said that, even if you’re singing one of the most fantastical roles in all of opera, if you do it too many times the same way, it loses its luster.

“I think becoming a mom has somewhat changed my view about her and also having done so many different productions all over the world and working with so many different directors,” she said.

The Queen of the Night is full of rage because she’s lost everything after her husband died; her power in society has died with him. And her daughter has been kidnapped.

“She’s a highly frustrated woman who lives in a man’s world,” Lewek said. She doesn’t condone the character’s actions, like murder, of course, but said, “I would like to challenge anybody to tell me that they could behave perfectly when their whole lives have been shattered.”

Singing the role of the Queen of the Night is particularly demanding because of the vocal range, speed and intensity required. Lewek acknowledged she's heard that she makes it seem easy.

“I’m so glad that is the way it comes across, I guess, but I’m also a little disappointed, because I’m like, ‘Guys, this is really, really hard, and I wish you’d appreciate it a little more!’” she said with a laugh.

Beyond the Queen

While the Queen of the Night is an iconic role, the character is only onstage for 12½ minutes. Lewek is hoping to play more roles where she gets to go through a metamorphosis onstage and experience a person’s whole journey.

“I’ve been really blessed with an amazing career thus far. I’m really looking forward to the next phase, too. I’m probably going to retire the Queen in the next few seasons because there are so many other things that I want to do in my career,” Lewek said, adding that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t come out of Queen retirement “to do something special.”

She doesn’t want to look back on her artistic life and think she only did one thing and a smattering of others.

“As much as I have seen how much I can enjoy delving into one role and fleshing it out into different interpretations, I want to do that with meatier roles. I want to do that with lots of leading lady roles that go through … more of a big journey onstage,” she said.

She has loved, for instance, playing the roles of Lucia in “Lucia di Lammermoor” and Violetta in “La Traviata.”

Already lined up for this summer: She’ll sing the four heroines in Offenbach’s “The Tales of Hoffmann” in Salzburg, Austria.

“It takes a really specific voice to be able to sing all four of the female roles. That’s not a super common thing to happen. You have to start out as a very light coloratura soprano. By the end, you’re a full lyric soprano singing really full stuff. That’s a really fun thing for me to do to show off the variety of colors that I have in my instrument,” Lewek said. “So, yeah, I like challenges.”

k.dorsey@theday.com