Soprano hits super-high note – and breaks 130-year-old Metropolitan Opera record

Soprano Audrey Luna has reached new heights for New York’s Metropolitan Opera.

In Thomas Adès’ “The Exterminating Angel,” she hits a note so high that it broke a record at the more than 130-year-old opera, according to The New York Times.

Luna briefly hits a high A in a monumental feat.

Others have come close – hitting a high A flat.

Rachele Gilmore, an understudy for the role of Olympia in the French opera “The Tales of Hoffman,” had to fill in at the last minute to sing the difficult aria, “The Doll Song,” according to The Culture Trip. In it, she hit a high A flat:

“I was 28 at the time, living in Queens,” Gilmore wrote on Reddit, according to The Culture Trip. “It was 2 days before Christmas and my parents were in town visiting. I really did only have 4 hours notice and we all took a ride across the Triboro bridge in rush hour traffic to get me into the makeup chair in time. My parents actually got to see the performance, which was my MET debut, and is still is really special to me.”

Erin Morley also hit the high A flat as Olympia, as did Luna herself in that role:

Luna is a Grammy-winning singer who plays opera diva Leticia in “The Exterminating Angel,” based on Luis Buñuel’s 1962 film, The Times reports. In the opera, guests attending a dinner party find themselves unable to leave at the end of the evening.

“I’ve practiced up to a C above high C in the past,” she said in an interview with The Times. “So I know it’s in me. But it’s just nothing I’ve performed on any stage before.”

Met archivist Peter Clark told The Times that a singer could have hit a higher note than A in the past, as there are no records, “but I doubt that it wouldn’t be mentioned somewhere.”

The opera runs through Nov. 21.

This story was originally published November 8, 2017 at 11:51 AM with the headline "Soprano hits super-high note – and breaks 130-year-old Metropolitan Opera record."