“Guleghina knows what melodrama is all about. When her Adriana, feverishly dying, cried, “Melpomene son io!” one did not quite believe it, but one did believe that Guleghina, as Adriana, believed it.
…Her voice is extraordinary — sometimes it bubbles over like some great Russian river in flood, whelming the landscape in solid sound, and at other times it blinks out just when you hoped you could rely on it. … She tosses herself about with abandon in the love scenes, but she is at the top of her form in the great confrontations with Olga Borodina’s Princesse de Bouillon, and when, at the climax of Act II, these two great ladies in full cry and spectacular silken costumes, panniers on display like the plumage of prehistoric birds in battle array, it is one of opera’s great scenes presented at the pitch of gladiatorial combat. Poisoned violets? I was surprised not to see blood and broken bones, picked clean by harpie teeth and claws.”
Opera Today