"Sensational" ... "Transformative"

Jake Heggie, Composer

Terrence McNally, Libretto

HOUSTON GRAND OPERA

Joyce DiDonato, Philip Cutlip, Frederica von Stade

Patric Summers, Conductor

“The recording is sensational. Heggie’s direct style, harking back to Gershwin and Bernstein, has always attracted star singers, and in one of her most subtly characterised performances to date, Joyce DiDonato plays Prejean alongside Philip Cutlip’s formidable De Rocher. Frederica von Stade is devastating as De Rocher’s desperate mother, while Patrick Summers’ conducting is exceptional in its passion and commitment.” ~ Tim Ashley The Guardian May 2012

“New Dead Man Walking Sings With Eloquence”

“As Sister Helen, the wonderful mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato starts somewhat cool, but soon ratchets up intensity. Her passion becomes deeply moving, with several perfectly placed, magnificent high notes making their mark.

Do not be afraid of the horror of Dead Man Walking. It is a true work of art, transformative in its impact and it will resound in your heart and psyche long after Tosca has jumped from the parapet.“  ~ Jason Victor Serinus San Francisco Classical Voice April 2012

© Felix Sanchez c/o Houston Grand Opera

With not only voice but also personality to burn, DiDonato’s gorgeously sung, passionately acted Mary is the jewel in the crown of the show. Given her skyrocketing fame, her first turn in this juicy role makes the production an event, and DiDonato does not disappoint, even exceeds expectations.

From her first aria expressing her joy at being allowed to walk in the open air, DiDonato brings Mary to vibrant life – exuding nobility and grace under pressure, yet also warmly human. With her legato phrasing, the power and clarity of her vocal production, there’s no part of her range in which she does not sing with distinction. She dispatches the more complicated ornamental passages with fluidity and bravura ease, with a velvety warmth in her high notes, and remarkable throaty fervor in her lower register. The entire closing scene is her tour de force.”  ~ Everett Evans Houston Chronicle April 2012
“The main draw of Houston’s Maria Stuarda is mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who for the first time sings the title role of a work rightly famous for its confrontation (in defiance of historical reality) between Mary Stuart and her nemesis, Elizabeth I.
Humiliated by Elizabeth, the subjugated Mary retaliates in DiDonato’s masterly delivery with due deliberation, her anger seething yet checked by the proud manner that had so irritated Elizabeth – when Mary exclaims “vil bastarda”, you know it is her considered opinion. DiDonato’s singing of the role’s florid passages is first rate, but Mary expresses herself most touchingly in elegant cantilena – as in the final scene’s choral prayer – which DiDonato sings with seamless legato and gorgeous tone.” ~ George Loomis Financial Times April 2012

© Felix Sanchez c/o Houston Grand Opera

“On Saturday night, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato joined this distinguished company, scoring a huge success as she performed the role for the first time in a production new to the Houston Grand Opera.

From her first entrance, wistfully recalling her happy childhood days in France, DiDonato sang with commanding power, silken elegance of line and deep expressiveness. She captured Mary’s fierce pride and desperation as well as her religious piety and courage in the face of death.

Though the role has often been taken by sopranos who dazzle the audience with their high notes, DiDonato showed that, with the right singer, the lower-voiced alternate version can be just as satisfying. In the florid passages, her embellishments were exquisite – and all the more effective for seeming to flow spontaneously from her character’s state of mind.” ~ Mike Silverman Huffington Post (AP) April 2012

© Felix Sanchez c/o Houston Grand Opera

“There’s an old Italian operatic term, one that probably originated at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala (or La Scala, for operaphiles), called “prima donna assoluta.” It denotes the female singer without equal, the first among firsts, the absolute best that opera delivers. It’s rarely used seriously anymore, but after seeing Houston Grand Opera’s production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda (1835) — HGO calls it Mary Stuart, but sings it in Italian — I propose that the moniker should be brought back into usage and bestowed upon mezzo Joyce DiDonato.

There is no one like her on the opera stage today. She is a star, a superstar, in fact, and has all the finest qualities that overworked term brings to mind: a radiant and attractive stage presence whose heat can be felt by an audience; an effortless light that illuminates her character; and, the prima quality for any singer, a flawless technique and lush vocal tone that flies through whatever roulades, filigree and stratospheric heights the composer asks. She is a phenomenon …

In other words, she has arrived. Like the publicists said about Garbo: DiDonato’s back and Houston’s got her! Young and on the ascendant cusp of her career, she is the future of opera. We can put all worries about that fat old art form, growing useless and eating chocolates on the divan, on the back burner for the present. With her gracing the stage, opera’s in excellent shape.

Hail to the queen. Hail, DiDonato! Long may you reign!”  ~ D.L Groover Houston Press 2012

© Felix Sanchex c/o Houston Grand Opera

“DiDonato is a first-rate actor and inhabits the role with a nuance any of her stage peers would envy including the non-singing ones like Janet McTeer. The look in her face and tone in her voice when she defiantly defends her faith and reputation in the face of Elizabeth’s accusations are priceless. Vocally there’s almost nothing more you could ask for. She dispatches colouratura runs with detail, can float pianissimos and leaves the audience hanging on every breath. There is still some room for her to grow in the part [...] but make no mistake, it’s a performance you’ll want to see more than once, so hearing her sing it after some more stage time is an event to anticipate.” ~ Out West Arts April 2012

“Which brings me to Joyce DiDonato, well-loved here in Houston and quite miraculous as Mary Stuart, deposed Queen of Scotland. [...] She is stunning in the part, making something very great out of each and every phrase.

DiDonato is a mezzo-soprano, and the first thing to glow over in this Maria Stuarda is her brilliant range. She really gives attention to the lower notes, which are golden and resonant, almost jewel-like. The phrasing is smooth and well-connected. At the same time, she doesn’t belabor the arias, providing instead a kind of lightness more characteristic of Donizetti.

Perhaps the thing that stunned me the most was her quiet intensity in certain arias sung pianissimo, yet ringing clear as a bell in the large theater. I never struggled to hear her, and the orchestra never dominated even her most subtle phrases. In the final scene depicting her ascent to the scaffold, it’s hard not to be moved deeply when she sings, “May my innocent blood, when shed, placate the anger of enraged heaven.”

This is, after all, a tragic opera, and DiDonato demonstrated why with brilliant conviction.” ~ Theodore Bale CultureMap April 2012

Conductors Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Leonard Bernstein
and soprano Maria Callas head the list

The world’s most influential classical recording review celebrates the movers and shakers
of the classical recording industry

With its May issue,Gramophone launches its Hall of Fame, a list of 50 men and women who have most influenced the classical record industry, as voted for by the magazine’s readers and visitors to its website. From an initial list of nearly 500 people drawn up by Gramophone’s editors, 50 emerged from the voting process as having the significance on the industry its roughly 110 year history.

Conductors, singers, instrumentalists, producers, engineers, label founders and A&R executives were all eligible (composers and large ensembles were not). Nearly 5500 votes were cast to achieve the first 50 honorees of the Hall of Fame.

The 50 honorees are championed by 50 musicians and critics. So Mariss Jansons writes about Karajan, Angela Gheorghiu about Callas, Christian Thielemann about Furtwängler, Lang Lang about Barenboim, Sir Antonio Pappano about Domingo, and composer Jake Heggie about Joyce DiDonato.

Gramophone’s Editor-in-Chief, James Jolly, explained that ‘Gramophone celebrates its 90th birthday next year, and so has witnessed at close quarters the development and growth of the classical music industry. That makes us perfectly placed to create a list that celebrates the heroes not just of today, but also of the golden years that witnessed the arrival of electrical recording, the LP, stereo, digital recording, the CD and the download.’

The list contains many of the great names of classical music in the 20th and 21st centuries: conductors like Karajan, Furtwängler, Toscanini, Klemperer and Carlos Kleiber to today’s stars like Rattle and Gardiner; pianists such as Perahia, Pollini, Richter, Rubinstein, Horowitz and Gould; violinists Oistrakh, Menuhin and Heifetz; singers such as Callas, Domingo, Björling, Sutherland and Fischer-Dieskau.

And the Hall of Fame doesn’t neglect the ‘back-room boys’ either: producers Walter Legge and John Culshaw, and the founder of Hyperion Ted Perry, have all been voted in.

Joyce is one of only three working singers to be voted in by the public and joins the ranks of Baker, Bartoli, Björling, Callas, Caruso, Domingo, Fischer-Dieskau, Nilsson, Pavarotti, Schwarzkopf and Sutherland.

Each year, Gramophone will invite its readers to add to the list, which will be revealed in the spring.

View the list of complete list of winners here.

Prairie Village’s own Joyce DiDonato returns home to sing with the Kansas City Symphony this month.

No offense to the Prince-penned Sheila E tune from her teenage days, but Joyce DiDonato really is leading the glamorous life as one of the world’s finest mezzo-sopranos.

Her 2012 schedule kicked off with a dream scenario of a month-long engagement at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, the world premiere of The Enchanted Island. Arias and other snippets from composers like Handel and Vivaldi are meshed together in a rousing Baroque collage for the production, which also featured esteemed tenor Plácido Domingo.

From there, DiDonato switched coasts for another world premiere in San Francisco on Feb. 4, this time Jake Heggie’s song cycle Camille Claudel: Into the Fire, inspired by the French sculptor. Then, she made her way to southern California so she could attend the Grammys as a two-time nominee: Best Classical Vocal Solo (winning for her album Diva/Divo) and Best Opera Recording (taking part in Vivaldi’s re-assembled Ercole sul Termodonte).

And after a string of concerts in Europe, the homegrown DiDonato will be back in Kansas City March 23-25 to sing Heggie’s The Deepest Desire and Rossini’s Giovanna d’Arco. It will be her second time with the Kansas City Symphony, and her first at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

Frenzied as her life is, DiDonato used her flight back from San Francisco as an opportunity to cool down and gather more thoughts about music, growing up in Johnson County and why her weekend in Kansas City is the one she’s looking forward to the most this year.

435 South: First of all, how was New York for the entire month of January? Could you tell us more about The Enchanted Island and the role you played?

Joyce DiDonato: New York was sublime. I love that city and the energy it gives me. It also, however, requires a lot of energy, so after two months there, I’m usually ready to
move on and recover!

I was playing the role of Sycorax, an island sorceress who has lost her power, but works to regain it throughout the opera. It’s a fascinating role, because part of The Enchanted Island is pulled from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and my character is only ever referred to, but never appears. So we had a completely blank slate on which to create her, and that freedom was wonderful.

435: In terms of history and tradition, what significance does performing at the Metropolitan Opera House hold for you?

JD: As an American singer, it is certainly the pinnacle of companies in my country, so it feels like reaching the top of Mount Everest. Today, with the HD movie broadcasts, we can reach hundreds of thousands of people in over 50 countries with one live performance, and that is certainly an incredible thing for this art form.

435: Is this the first time you’ve been able to sing with Plácido Domingo? What was it like working with him this much?

JD: I was a winner in his vocal competition, Operalia, in 1998, and we performed a duet from [Bellini’s opera] Norma together on the winner’s concert. He is a consummate professional, always eager and curious to learn more, and truly one of the most generous colleagues and performers I have ever met. I was pinching myself during every single performance that I shared with him!

435: How would you describe your childhood in Prairie Village?

JD: It was a very typical Midwest suburban upbringing, with summers spent at the Prairie Village swimming pool, babysitting, piano lessons and a wonderful education via Bishop Miege High School, where I was a choir geek and theater nut! I consider myself supremely fortunate to have grown up where I did.

435: What kind of music did you own and listen to during that time?

JD: Billy Joel! He was my favorite. But all the typical 80s rock and a bit of classic rock as well through my older siblings. My dad also had a great big band collection, and those were a great source of inspiration to me growing up as well.

435: You did not immediately embark on opera as your calling; music education was where you thought you were headed. How did opera begin to effectively claim you while you were a student at Wichita State University?

JD: I joined the opera chorus and fell in love with it. It was the culmination of the theater, which I already loved so much from high school, and the highest of musical values. I was hooked immediately the first time I stepped on the operatic stage at WSU.

435: What was your first production? How did that help assimilate you into the world of opera?

JD: I was in the chorus of Die Fledermaus at WSU, and it was the most wonderful time! I understood then the sense of community, which was wonderful, but also the sheer level of perfection and excellence that was required. That really got my blood pumping, because the challenge was HUGE to succeed. I still am daunted by it, but the challenge excites me continuously.

435: What pitfalls or doubts did you encounter once you committed to singing? At what crossroads did you find yourself, if at all, with your time at the Houston Grand Opera Studio?

JD: There were numerous, constant pitfalls, primarily not believing I had a good enough voice. I always trusted my musical instincts and my theatrical impulses, but the voice never quite worked as easily as I thought it should—and therefore I never liked the way I actually sounded. Arriving in Houston at the age of 26, I finally found a
teacher who helped me iron out some of the basic flaws of my technique, and then the “natural” voice started to emerge.

435: What levels of perseverance and determination did you require of yourself so that you weren’t going to be denied?

JD: Well, I suppose it was blind determination more than anything, not really knowing if I could make it or not. I simply made a promise to myself that I would continue to try and make it for as long as I felt I wanted to. It meant believing in myself—deeply—when few other people did.

435: You sang Ernest Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer at the Lyric the last time you performed with the Kansas City Symphony. What was special to you about those performances?

JD: They were my first with the Symphony and with Maestro Stern, andit felt as if my hometown was truly welcoming me into the heart of their artistic community. It was something I had long hoped for, and just as when I debuted with the Lyric Opera, this sense of singing for family and friends overwhelmed me. I sing for strangers the vast majority of the time, so to be given the chance to sing for my family and friends? Well, that’s golden.

435: How excited are you to make your debut at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts? In your estimation, how has Michael Stern revitalized the Kansas City Symphony to match the beautiful aesthetic of Helzberg Hall?

JD: This will be the highlight of a very full and rich season for me. The statement that Kansas City made by seeing this dream through to the finish line defies description. The enormity of it resounds internationally, and it gives me the greatest bragging rights when I travel to the music capitals of the world.

Kansas City made a bold declaration that the arts are invaluable to a community and that we treasure them. This makes me more proud than I can say. And Maestro Stern’s contribution, along with Frank Byrne, the executive director, has been monumental. I could not be more proud of this city.

435: Which composers captivate you most in any classical form, whether it’s orchestral, choral or operatic?

JD: I will always come back to Handel as being the most supremely emotional and theatrical composer—not always easily accessible, but to invest in his operas fully, the payoff is enormous. I find it to be the painfully truthful writing. But don’t ask me to discount Mozart or Rossini or Massenet or Strauss or…or…or! It’s endless!

435: How often do you study other mezzos like Dame Janet Baker or Marilyn Horne, and do you still learn from other singers’ respective craft?

JD: I hope I will always keep learning. There is never, ever an end point to this world of music and theater, so I continually look to the legends of the past, as well as to my brilliant colleagues who support and teach me in numerous ways.

435: You are definitely spanning the globe Wide World of Sports-style this year. Does it exhaust you or embolden you each year?

JD: It is equal parts exhausting and invigorating. I do have to be careful not to get run down, because my instrument is my body, and there is no margin for ill-health. So I’m trying to be smart with getting the rest that I need. But I do love what I do, and there is only so much time!

435: What about Johnson County and Kansas City appeals to you after traveling the world?

JD: That’s easy: It’s home. It’s real. It’s beautiful. And it’s home.