Joyce DiDonato

Joyce DiDonato consistently earns ecstatic reviews wherever she sings. Among the world’s most charismatic performers, she is winner of the Metropolitan Opera’s Beverly Sills Award, among many other honors. “The buoyant progress of DiDonato’s career has been one of the happiest opera events of the past decade,” states Opera News magazine. Critics have called her technique “fearless” and described the range of her performing ability from “playful eroticism to imploding self-delusion to near-catatonic depression.” This season Joyce DiDonato releases her first solo recording on EMI’s Virgin Classics label. “Furore” features Handel arias and was recorded with Les Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset, with whom she tours Europe and the US in mid-winter. DG/Archiv Produktion releases Handel’s Alcina with Ms. DiDonato in the title role later in the year. She opens Wigmore Hall’s 2008-09 season, then sings her role debut as Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a worldwide telecast at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, to which she returns at the end of the season in Il barbiere di Siviglia. After making her debut with her hometown Kansas City Symphony; Ms. DiDonato sings her first Béatrice in Berlioz’s rollicking Béatrice et Bénédict with Houston Grand Opera, and again in concert performances in Paris with Sir Colin Davis before she returns to the Paris Opéra in Mozart’s Idomeneo. Important concerts this season include the world premiere of Peter Lieberson’s song cycle, The World in Flower with the New York Philharmonic and its next music director, Alan Gilbert; her first main-stage Carnegie Hall concert, with the MET Orchestra under James Levine; her Vienna State Opera debut, as Rosina in Rossini’s Barbiere; and her first appearances in Germany, as Octavian, with the Deutsche Oper Berlin during its Richard Strauss Festival. Recently Joyce DiDonato performed three new roles in each of two consecutive seasons, with a total of seven in over little more than two years, and garnered raves for all of them. Critical encomium ranged from “what to praise first?” for her Romeo in Bellini’s Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Paris Bastille; and “on her starriest form, a performance full of pathos and dazzling vocalism” for Massenet’s Cendrillon in Santa Fe; to “displaying all the headstrong charm and mutability of this 17-year-old aristocrat” for the Rosenkavalier’s Octavian in San Francisco; and finally, in Geneva, “DiDonato’s excellent Ariodante is not so surprising – we now expect no less of her”. Further new roles were Strauss’s Composer in a Madrid Ariadne auf Naxos, and the title role in Handel’s Alcina in Milan, which she recorded with Alan Curtis and his Complesso Barocco. Ms. DiDonato has soared to international prominence in operas by Rossini, Handel, and Mozart, as well as in high-profile world premieres. Her growing discography has earn accolades far and wide. Her Wigmore Hall recital disc was a Gramophone “Editor’s Choice”. The Deepest Desire, her first solo disc, was awarded France’s Diapason d’or de l’année, an extraordinary honor for a recording of American songs. Her CD of Spanish songs, ¡Pasión!, was a London Sunday Times “Classical CD of the week”, praised for its “authentic-sounding Iberian fire” and dubbed the disc “that admirers of the young American mezzo have been waiting for.” Her signature parts are in Rossini’s La cenerentola and Il barbiere di Siviglia – her Rosina in “Barber” at the Metropolitan Opera won over audiences in New York and on cinema screens all over the world, and she was called “the best Rosina around” by the London Sunday Times for the portrayal. After beginning her career in the U.S., Joyce DiDonato soon developed a growing and enthusiastic worldwide following in opera, concert and recital. In addition to appearing on the world’s major opera stages – in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Chicago, Geneva, London, Milan, Munich, New York, Paris, San Francisco, and Tokyo, to which she adds Vienna and Berlin this season – she has given recitals and concerts at Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Carnegie Hall, and with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Orchestre National de Paris, St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Ms. DiDonato has had important triumphs at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro and in performances and recordings with Alan Curtis’s ensemble, Il Complesso Barocco and William Christie and his Arts Florissants. Born and educated in Kansas, the dynamic and engaging mezzo soprano was a member of the young artist programs of the San Francisco, Houston Grand, and Santa Fe Opera companies after graduate studies at Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts. Three seasons ago Joyce DiDonato gave her Metropolitan Opera debut as Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro, sang her role debut as Sesto in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito at the Geneva Opera, and returned to Covent Garden as Rosina in a new production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia – receiving the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer of the Year award. She reprised her tour-de-force as Dejanira in Handel’s Hercules in New York and London, earning a prestigious Laurence Olivier Award nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Opera. London’s Guardian newspaper stated “Joyce DiDonato gives the performance of a lifetime as Dejanira, hurling out coloratura with the fury of a psychopath before descending into insanity.” Finally, she capped off the season with a triumphant role debut in the title part of Massenet’s Cendrillon at Santa Fe Opera. Gramophone commented about a recent complete opera recording, Handel’s Floridante: “Joyce DiDonato’s silvery singing is beautiful, stylish, dramatically astute yet unforced.” Her extensive discography includes a disc of Handel duets with soprano Patricia Ciofi; complete recordings of Rossini’s Cenerentola, Handel’s Radamisto and Floridante, Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini, and DVDs of Handel’s Hercules and Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia. She can also be heard in a survey of Antonio Vivaldi’s sacred music, as well as on three solo CDs – The Deepest Desire, ¡Pasión!, and her debut recital from London’s Wigmore Hall. At Houston Grand Opera she premiered the roles of Meg in Mark Adamo’s highly acclaimed Little Women, and of Katerina Maslova in Tod Machover’s epic Resurrection, both of which were recorded and are currently available. Honors – in addition to the Met’s Beverly Sills Award – bestowed upon Ms. DiDonato include the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer of the Year; the Richard Tucker Award, given to a single American singer annually; second place in Plácido Domingo’s Operalia, and prizes from the George London Foundation, the ARIA Award Foundation, and the Sullivan Foundation. “Elegant, unaffected and enchanting” – Opera News “It is a remarkable package that DiDonato offers: a mezzo cast in milk chocolate, so smooth and agile that it can reach up to a diamond-bright soprano as well as sink to a rich, chesty alto. And then there is the instinctive charisma: she is always engaging … and always intelligently shaping the verse and text.” – The Times (London) August 2008 Date Last Edited: 6th August 2008