The show must go on: as Rosina at Covent Garden

J

oyce DiDonato has travelled a long, winding road since that traumatic moment in 1997 when a judge at a song competition in London told her, point blank, that she had “nothing to offer as an artist.” Although the criticism, proffered

‘Joyce has a combination of timbre, technique, musicality and charisma for which “incomparable” is the only adequate word’

by none less than the illustrious British pianist and song accompanist Graham Johnson, came, she says, as “a kick in the gut” to the young, insecure American singer, she now regards it as precisely the constructive advice she needed to force her to re-examine, rebuild and deepen her relationship to her art – to discover what she really had to say through singing. The result is a smart, accomplished, vivacious yet modest mezzo-soprano, whose peerless Rossini, not to mention passionate Handel, stylish Mozart and all the other music in her arsenal, have made the self-styled “Yankee diva” the toast of opera theatres and recital halls on two continents. DiDonato is at the top of her game, and bel canto is its name. This

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Paris Opéra for a further six performances in June. In August she will sing her first Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma, opposite soprano Edita Gruberova, at the Salzburg Festival. In a field rife with backstage bitchery

and petty jealousies, you won’t hear anybody badmouthing Joyce DiDonato. Everybody, but everybody, seems to like her. To fellow singers, opera

administrators and others in the music business she is the consummate professional, a superb musician, discerning stylist and model colleague committed to giving her very best, regardless of the situation. “Joyce is just a lovely person and artist, in every possible way,” says

month brings the DVD release, on Virgin, of the now world-famous Covent Garden production of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia in 2009 in which the mezzo, who was performing as Rosina, tripped on a metal rail, breaking her fibula. She finished the show on a crutch, completing the run with her leg in a bright pink cast while navigating the set in a wheelchair. Her ultra-supportive colleagues on stage included Juan Diego Flórez (Almaviva) and Alessandro Corbelli (Bartolo), along with Antonio Pappano in the pit. DiDonato’s performance, not to mention her plucky determination, was rapturously applauded and she became an instant darling of the European press. That attention can only have fuelled anticipation of her two major bel canto role-debuts this year. The first will be Elena in Rossini’s La donna del lago, which she will introduce at Geneva’s Grand Théâtre this month before the show moves to the

10 GRAMOPHONE MAY 2010

Philip Gossett, the noted Rossini scholar who recently retired as a professor of music at the University of Chicago. “The ‘Yankee diva’ role really works for her. I had the good fortune of following some of the recording sessions she did for her recent Virgin Classics recording of Rossini arias, ‘Colbran, the Muse’, and I have to say that I was just astonished by how she was able to use her voice and the language so beautifully together. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone able to pronounce words so musically and so completely, so that what you hear is a kind of amalgam of words and music that we think of as being the heart of what makes wonderful opera. Joyce really does it, and that’s so rare in this world.” “Joyce is setting new standards in her repertoire,” agrees Roger Pines,

the dramaturg for Lyric Opera of Chicago who’s also a record annotator, lecturer and radio broadcaster. “She does it through a combination of timbre, technique, musicality and charisma for which ‘incomparable’ is the only adequate word. But what puts her in a special category is, above all, her individuality – the way she defines a character or sings a song is uniquely hers. She comes to any piece with a precise idea of what she

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