Soprano Elizabeth Caballero delivered a marvelous Violetta, the courtesan, on Friday. She was animated, communicative and believable, singing with a big, facile, focused sound while making the vocal demands of the role seem easy and natural.

She also was fearless onstage, playing the final scenes in a pale, disheveled, haggard state that lent reality to the illness that was about to claim her.

Elaine Schmidt, Milwaukee Journal Nov 9, 2013

The centerpiece is the wonderful Elizabeth Caballero. Her Violetta is technically assured, and both musically and dramatically compelling. Her famous scene at the close of act one captures the psychological subtlety of the moment—the nuanced character writing Verdi at which Verdi excelled. This is a woman of passionate intelligence searching deep to examine her life.

PAUL KOSIDOWSKI Milwaukee Magazine 11/11/2013

Giacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” is fraught with heartache and tragedy, but the most poignant moment of the Lyric Opera’s opening-night performance came not during the opera itself, but at the curtain call. Soprano Elizabeth Caballero, who had just delivered a stunning performance in the title role, sank to her knees in tears as the audience at the Kauffman Theatre rose to its feet. She had never performed the demanding role before and had been nervous about taking it on. But after her inspiring debut as the tragic heroine she may have felt like an enormous weight had been lifted.
Anyway you cut it, this was a personal triumph for Caballero, because after the final curtain her crystalline voice — delicate yet powerful, passionate yet controlled — is what lingers most vividly in the one’s memory.

Robert Trussell, Kansas City Star, 9/16/12

The performer who stole the stage was Elizabeth Caballero as Liu. At the conclusion of her first aria of the night the audience spontaneously erupted in applause. Her command of her character and her voice was exceptional and hers was the loudest applause at the conclusion of the evening.

Patrick Dixon, Austin Post 4/15/12

The show’s musical highlight is Elizabeth Caballero’s turn as Liu, the play’s most sympathetic character. Caballero nearly steals the show with a prodigiously beautiful voice, that shimmers with emotion, volume and nuanced shades of color. The crowd positively fawned over her, with an applause several orders of magnitude above the others (a wave of gratitude that topped any I’ve heard at the Long Center, for any concert). It plainly floored the young soprano.

Luke Quinton, Austin American Statesman 4/16/12

Most notable was Cuban-American soprano Elizabeth Caballero, who sang Liu in sensuously glowing tones, her charged legato shaping the music into cogent paragraphs. Liu’s death scene tore at the heart. For a long stretch in Act III, the performance achieved the kind of unselfconscious emotional directness that has lately been in short supply at the Met, where almost every production seems designed for people who think they don’t like opera, or worse, for the movie cameras.

Alex Ross, The New Yorker 10/31/11

The most poignant character in the piece is Liu, the loyal slave girl who has served Calaf’s father, the deposed Tartar king. in Act 1 Liu, who is secretly in love with Calaf, begs him not to risk his life on the riddles in the opera’s first great aria (“Signore, ascolta!”). Soprano Elizabeth Caballero’s performance of the piece on opening night was stunning. Indeed, Caballero threatens to walk away with the production, because her solo in Act 3, just before Liu takes her own life, is another highlight of this show.

Robert Trussell, Kansas City Star, 10/02/11