How to Be Medea? Summon Your Anger and Despair, and Hit the Gym.

It was an interval on a recent evening at the Metropolitan Opera, and soprano Sondra Radvanovsky was in her dressing room – eyes closed, head bowed – working to conjure distant memories.

Radvanovsky, who sings the title role in Luigi Cherubini’s “Medea,” was thinking of her father and the day, more than three decades earlier, when she was 17 when she found him dead at her childhood home after suffering a heart attack in California. As part of her pre-performance ritual, she began to recite the emotions that flooded through her in retrospect: loss, abandonment, love and hate.

“He’s here with me,” she said, glancing at her father’s driver’s license, which she had placed on a piano not far from a bag of her mother’s ashes.

The moment of reflection was all part of her effort to channel the pain and despair of her life in Medea, a tour de force opera in which her character, the vengeful sorceress, commits a series of dark and disturbing deeds including her own children murdered.

“You can’t just play it,” she said. “You really have to live it.”

“Medea,” which opened the Met’s season and will be released in theaters around the world on Saturday as part of the company’s Live in HD series, has become a career-defining performance for Radvanovsky, 53, which has garnered widespread praise has received intense and sinister portrayal.

She approached the role – one of the most demanding in the repertoire – with focus and purpose, adding boxing sessions with a personal trainer to build endurance and strength, and rehearsals with her vocal coach to ensure her vocals remain warm and resonant throughout the three -Hour opera, in which she rarely has a break.

“Medea” also proved to be formative for Radvanovsky on a personal level, offering a cathartic escape from a difficult time in her life: her mother died in January and she separated from her 21-year-old husband in February.

“It was very therapeutic for me,” she said. “The anger, the sadness, the depression, the loneliness – I unpack these emotions and feelings in my own life and on stage.”

David McVicar, the director of “Medea,” said he felt Radvanovsky found a way to use her pain without being overwhelmed by it.

“She was able to channel that energy instead of letting it destroy her,” he said. “She was able to turn it into a character, she could pull it out, express it, make some art out of those difficult emotions.”

He added: “Oddly enough, I think it was very healthy for her to play a role like Medea. It’s cathartic.”

The idea of ​​tackling “Medea” came in 2017 when Radvanovsky sang the title character in the Met production of Bellini’s “Norma.” Her singing teacher, Anthony Manoli, suggested that she dabble in “Medea” for some time, and she began noticing similarities to “Norma.” She said she thought it would be a natural next challenge, both emotionally and vocally.

“It goes in the same direction,” she said. “I find it like bel canto on steroids.”

She soon discussed the idea with McVicar, a frequent collaborator, and Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager.

Gelb said he was impressed by Radvanovsky’s command of Italian dramatic repertoire. Alongside Norma, she had performed Donizetti’s Tudor operas at the Met to great acclaim in 2016, a feat that made Beverly Sills famous at the New York City Opera in the 1970s.

“If any other singer had asked me about ‘Medea,'” he said, “I probably wouldn’t have answered so positively.”

He added, “My instinct was that when she said she wanted to do it, since I knew it was a real tour de force for a singer, that we should do it that we should do it.”

Despite the Met’s support, Radvanovsky knew she was signing on for one of the biggest challenges of her career.

Opera has a tremendous legacy. Maria Callas defined the role of Medea with a series of seminal recordings in the 1950s, and her interpretation is still widely shared. And it’s a physically demanding endeavor: Medea doesn’t leave the stage when she enters about 40 minutes into the first act, when she is given subtle highs, sweeping arias and a wealth of passages that demand both nuance and power.

“It’s vocally Hercules,” Radvanovsky said.

The turmoil in her personal life added to the difficulties. The death of her mother, who suffered from Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia, left Radvanovsky depressed and lonely.

“I knew it was going to be tough,” she said, “but I didn’t know it was going to be almost insurmountable.”

The dissolution of their marriage was also a shock. As a result, she felt insecure as she began to explore her own independence for the first time in decades. She also underwent a physical transformation, losing about 40 pounds.

As she prepared for the demands of the eight-run performance of “Medea” at the Met, she began personal training sessions that focused on strengthening her core muscles.

Between boxing and bench pressing at a downtown Manhattan gym, Radvanovsky said she was often exhausted all day after a performance and noticed the bruises on her legs. She has to squirm and stalk the stage in an unwieldy dress and sing in various supine positions.

“The vocal part has to become second nature,” she said. “You really have to focus on the rest of the device. What we do is very sporty.”

On opening night last month, she was highly focused. In the moments leading up to the performance, she said she decided to “open Pandora’s box” and allow herself to experience the trauma of her life more deeply. It was the first time in her career that she couldn’t remember anything about the performance other than her entrance and exit.

“I really felt like Medea,” she said. “I didn’t see an audience. I only saw the people on the stage.”

Critics applauded her energy and intensity, with some commenting that she seemed unfazed by the demands of the role.

“Radvanovsky, who gave her everything in a squirming, high-pitched version of the scorned sorceress of Greek myth, pacing deftly and commanding at the top of his lungs, deserved credit for just showing up and doing it with one of the most disheartening Incorporating vocal and vocal characters from the opera presents dramatic challenges,” wrote Zachary Woolfe, the New York Times classical music critic, in a review.

Her recent success has led to talk of future engagements at the Met. Gelb said he and Radvanovsky discussed several possibilities, including three Puccini operas – Turandot, La Fanciulla del West and a return to Tosca – as well as Ponchielli’s La Gioconda.

In her dressing room after a recent performance, Radvanovsky stood energetically at a sink while using shaving cream to wash fake blood from her hands. She said she felt uplifted knowing her performance resonated with thousands of people.

“It’s such an emotional role and it’s an emotional time for me,” she said. “I feel a sense of relief.”