Art Quote by Maria Jeritza

Jeritza reaches for a paradox artists recognize instantly: the most electric moment in creation is also the one least convertible into language. She calls it a "thrill", but not the cheap thrill of applause; it is the private jolt when intuition locks into form and the work suddenly feels inevitable. The syntax does the same thing the moment describes: it moves from effort ("hard to describe") to possession ("the conviction seizes her"), shifting agency away from the artist. Inspiration, in her telling, is not a mood but a takeover.

The key phrase is "caught the very soul". It's audacious, even a little predatory, as if character is something wild you stalk, trap, and finally hold still. That metaphor quietly elevates performance from craft to pursuit. It also sidesteps a modern suspicion about "authenticity": Jeritza isn't claiming the artist bares her own soul; she's arguing that the ethical and aesthetic task is to apprehend someone else's, then translate it into "music and action". In opera and theater, where Jeritza made her name, this is the whole wager: psychology has to become audible and visible, not explained.

The gendering matters too. "Her" insists that artistic authority belongs to women in a field that long treated them as vessels for roles, not interpreters of them. And "conviction" suggests a standard beyond technique: you can sing every note correctly and still miss the point. The joy arrives when expression stops being decoration and becomes revelation, when the audience doesn't just hear a voice but recognizes a person.