"With her supple mezzo, Samantha Hankey transforms the meaning of the smothered Elf’s distressed cries from inside a rose placed over the Beloved’s (still-beating) heart. Her gushing consonants, fondling portamentos and libidinous low notes on the line “the white heat of his flesh makes me sweat” convey intense carnal—even sadomasochistic—desire. In a Liebestod on behalf of the dead couple, Hankey flits nymphlike through Hertzberg’s idiomatically graceful vocal writing, building up to the climactic “Apocalypse of Petals.”

—Joe Cadagin for Opera News