Joyce DiDonato (née Flaherty; born February 13, 1969) is an American opera singer and recitalist. A coloratura mezzo-soprano,[1] she has performed operas and concert works spanning from the 19th-century Romantic era to those by Handel and Mozart.
Joyce Flaherty was born in Prairie Village, Kansas in 1969, the sixth of seven children in an Irish-American family. Her father, Donald Martin Flaherty, was a self-employed architect who designed houses in the area; her mother, Kathleen Claire (McGlinchy) Flaherty, worked for the Gas Service Co. writing recipes in their test kitchen.[2] One of her sisters, Amy Hetherington, was a music teacher at St. Ann Catholic School, which Joyce and her siblings attended.[3] She later went to Bishop Miege High School where she sang in musicals.[3] She entered Wichita State University (WSU) in 1988 to study vocal music education, because she was initially more interested in teaching high school vocal music and musical theatre. She became interested in opera after seeing a PBS telecast of Don Giovanni,[3] and then, in her junior year, when she was cast in a school production of Die Fledermaus.
After graduating from WSU in spring 1992, DiDonato decided to pursue graduate studies in vocal performance at the Academy of Vocal Arts.[4] Following her studies in Philadelphia, she was accepted in the Santa Fe Opera's Apprentice Singer program for the summer 1995 festival season, where she appeared in several minor roles and understudied for larger parts in such operas as Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, Richard Strauss' Salome, Kálmán's Gräfin Mariza and the 1994 world premiere of David Lang's Modern Painters. She was honored as one of several Outstanding Apprentice Artists by the Santa Fe Opera that year.[5]
In a 2016 interview with English mezzo-soprano Janet Baker, DiDonato discussed that from age 26 to 29 (circa 1995–1998), she radically changed her vocal technique. "When a lot of my friends were getting covers at The Met and leading roles at [The New York] City Opera,… it wasn't coming together for me. And I stopped and I said, 'OK, let's revamp.' .... And I was really bad for about a year and a half, because my teacher was taking away all the mechanism that I was using to sing. And it was the best thing that could have happened."[8]
Career
1998–2008
DiDonato began her professional career in the 1998/1999 season singing with several regional opera companies in the United States. She most notably appeared as the main heroine, Maslova, in the world premiere of Tod Machover's Resurrection with Houston Grand Opera.[9] She gave a recital in San Francisco that year as part of the Schwabacher recital series.
She gave her first performances in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda as the role of Elisabetta at the Grand Théâtre de Genève during the 2004/2005 season. Also, she returned to La Scala as Angelina in Rossini's La Cenerentola and once again played Rosina in a new production of The Barber of Seville by Luca Ronconi at the Pesaro Festival and the Teatro Comunale di Bologna.[10]
During the 2005/06 season, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro and also played Stéphano in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette there. She returned to the Royal Opera House as Rosina in The Barber of Seville, sang her first Sesto in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito at Grand Théâtre de Genève, and sang the role of Dejanira in Handel's Hercules at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York and the Barbican Centre with William Christie. She appeared in several concerts with the New York Philharmonic and gave a recital at Wigmore Hall. She closed the Santa Fe Opera's 50th anniversary season in the title role of Massenet's Cendrillon.[10]
DiDonato debuted at the Teatro Real as the composer in Ariadne auf Naxos in the 2006/07 season, and returned to the Paris Opera as Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo and to Houston Grand Opera as Angelina in La Cenerentola. She sang Rosina in The Barber of Seville at the Metropolitan Opera and sang her first Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier with the San Francisco Opera in addition to an extensive recital tour through the United States and Europe accompanied by Julius Drake.[12]
In the 2008/2009 season, DiDonato returned to Royal Opera House as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni. In a performance as Rosina at the same house on July 7, she slipped onstage and broke her right fibula, hopping in the first act and spending the rest on crutches. She then carried out the five remaining performances in a wheelchair.[14] She performed the roles of Beatrice in Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict at Houston Grand Opera, Idamante in Mozart's Idomeneo with Opéra National de Paris, and Rosina in her debut at Vienna State Opera.[citation needed]
She sang the role of Isolier in Rossini's Le comte Ory at the Metropolitan Opera in April 2011. In April 2012, she sang the title role in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda at the Houston Grand Opera,[16] repeating the role in the work's premiere performances at the Metropolitan Opera in January 2013. In the spring of 2013, she starred in a new production of La donna del lago at the Royal Opera House.[17] A new production was mounted by the Santa Fe Opera during its 2013 festival season, also starring DiDonato with Lawrence Brownlee as Uberto.
[18] For the first time in its 57-year history, the Santa Fe Opera added an extra performance of La donna del lago due to unprecedented ticket demand.[19]
She performed in Rossini's La Cenerentola, as the title role at the Metropolitan Opera in April and May.[23][24]
In early September 2014, she opened the Wigmore Hall's 2014/15 season with two concerts and with Antonio Pappano at the piano. The programme included works by Haydn, Rossini, Santoliquido and songs from the Great American Songbook. A live recording was released in 2015 as Joyce and Tony: Live at Wigmore Hall, which won Best Classical Vocal Solo Album in the 2016 Grammy Award.[25]
In late September 2014, DiDonato opened the Barbican Centre's 2014/15 classical season with a concert entitled "Stella di Napoli"[26] with the Orchestre et Choeur de l'Opéra de Lyon conducted by Riccardo Minasi. This was the first concert of five events for Joyce DiDonato in the Barbican's Artist Spotlight series. The remaining four events were three concerts:
In 2015, she began giving masterclasses annually at Carnegie Hall, more specifically, at the Weill Music Institute.[32] This is a three-day program where several aspiring singers (usually college students) study with her personally over three days, to receive important feedback regarding their performance and vocal abilities.
In November 2016, she released an album entitled In War & Peace: Harmony through Music, a project conceived in response to the November 2015 Paris attacks.[33][34] She collaborated with Maxim Emelyanychev and Il Pomo d'Oro in a series of concert recitals imbued with choreography and theatrical effects. They subsequently toured the program through Europe and the United States.[35] The project, which lasted for three years, also toured to Russia, Asia, and South America; the 4 June 2017 performance at the Liceu was filmed and later released on DVD. The last performances in November 2019 staged at the Kennedy Center, Washington D.C. was followed by a conversation with Donna Leon and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.[36]
On December 31, 2017, she was featured in a New Year's Eve Concert at the Berlin Philharmonic.
In 2019, she released her album Songplay, which mixes jazz, Latin, and tango rhythms into arrangements of Italian Baroque arias, jazz standards, and picks from the Great American Songbook. After a well-acclaimed album release, she then went on to do a national tour, after the album was released between February 18 and March 10, 2019.[37] This album received a 2020 Grammy Award - DiDonato's third.[38]
DiDonato acted and sang in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Handel's Agrippina in 2020, in the title role of Agrippina.[39] She portrayed Virginia Woolf in the Metropolitan Opera's world stage premiere of Kevin Puts's opera The Hours in November 2022.[40]
2000: ARIA (Awards Recognizing Individual Artistry) award, which was given annually to American "vocal artists of exceptional ability and undeniable promise"[7]
Berlioz – La Damnation de Faustas Marguerite (2019); Les Petits Chanteurs de Strasbourg, Maîtrise de l'Opéra national du Rhin, Orchestre philarmonique de Strasbourg, conducted by John Nelson, Errato Records/Warner Classics. Diapason d'or.
The Deepest Desire, songs by Bernstein, Copland and Heggie (2006); accompanied by pianist David Zobel, Eloquentia
Joyce DiDonato: Songs by Fauré, Hahn and Head · Arias by Rossini and Handel, (recorded live at Wigmore Hall, released 2006); accompanied by pianist Julius Drake, Wigmore Hall Live
¡Pasión!, songs by de Falla, Granados, Montsalvatge, Obradors and Turina (2007); accompanied by pianist Julius Drake, Eloquentia
Diva, Divo, arias by Bellini, Berlioz, Gluck, Gounod, Massenet, Mozart, Rossini and R. Strauss (2011); Kazushi Ono conducting Orchestre et Choeur de l'Opéra National de Lyon, Virgin Classics[62]
Joyce & Tony: Live at Wigmore Hall, arias by Rossini, Santoliquido, a cantata by Haydn and songs from the Great American Songbook (recorded September 2014, released 2015); accompanied by Antonio Pappano at the piano, Erato
