In all her endeavors, both on and off the stage, Joyce DiDonato engages audiences through her energy, imagination, and commitment to her art form.
Through these qualities, and with a constantly questing spirit, she has nurtured the vocal, musical and dramatic talents that have taken her to the pinnacle of her profession as a performer.
Equally, they serve her as an eloquent and formidable advocate for the transformative power of the arts as she takes music far beyond the world’s great stages – to educational institutions, refugee camps, and maximum-security prisons.
“Music heals,” she has said, “and it can fire people up with purpose and courage to change the world.
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The winner of multiple Grammys and the 2018 Olivier Award, Kansas-born Joyce DiDonato is, in the words of the New Yorker, “perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation”, her voice having been described by The Times as “nothing less than 24-carat gold”.
For all its beauty and agility, its true impact lies in Joyce’s capacity to illuminate character and meaning through nuances of colour and phrasing and her unfailingly communicative way with the text.
Julia Bullock, Joyce DiDonato and Jakub Jozef Orlinski star in Katie Mitchell’s thrilling new production of Handel’s Theodora in an alternative modern-day reality, Theodora, a religious fundamentalist, plots for the resistance against the Roman occupation. But when her secret plan to destroy the Roman embassy is discovered, she learns the true brutality of her oppressors. Harry Bicket conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Renée Fleming makes her highly anticipated return to the Met in the world-premiere production of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Kevin Puts’s The Hours, adapted from Michael Cunningham’s acclaimed novel. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and made a household name by the Oscar-winning 2002 film version starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, the powerful story follows three women from different eras who each grapple with their inner demons and their roles in society. The exciting premiere radiates with star power, with Kelli O’Hara and Joyce DiDonato joining Fleming as the opera’s trio of heroines. Phelim McDermott directs this compelling drama, with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium to conduct Puts’s poignant and powerful score.
Having triumphed at the Met in some of the repertory’s fiercest soprano roles, Sondra Radvanovsky stars as the mythic sorceress who will stop at nothing in her quest for vengeance. Joining Radvanovsky in the Met-premiere production of Cherubini’s rarely performed masterpiece is tenor Matthew Polenzani as Medea’s Argonaut husband, Giasone; soprano Janai Brugger as her rival for his love, Glauce; bass Michele Pertusi as Glauce’s father, Creonte, the King of Corinth; and mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova as Medea’s confidante, Neris. Carlo Rizzi conducts.
In its most ambitious effort yet to bring the joy and artistry of opera to audiences everywhere during the Met’s closure, the company presented an unprecedented virtual At-Home Gala, featuring more than 40 leading artists performing in a live stream from their homes all around the world.
Join host Michael Keaton to celebrate "Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood," the pioneering children's series that premiered nationally 50 years ago. Celebrities, cast members and Joanne Rogers reveal their favorite memories from the series.
Told through performances, TV interviews, home movies, family photographs, private letters and unpublished memoirs, the film reveals the essence of an extraordinary woman who rose from humble beginnings in New York City to become a glamorous international superstar and one of the greatest artists of all time.
Florence Foster Jenkins is known as "the worst singer of all times" and yet she is a cult figure whose recordings still outsell many contemporary singers. Opera superstar Joyce DiDonato interprets the flamboyant "queen of dissonance". The involvement of the celebrated virtuoso makes it possible to contrast two different musical perspectives and gives viewers a vivid impression of the film's key conflict between inner delusion and external reality.
Werther loves Charlotte, but she promised her mother on her deathbed that she would marry Albert. After the marriage Charlotte suggests that Werther should travel – but not forget her. Benoît Jacquot’s production of Massenet’s tragic opera explores the conflict between duty and our most passionate desires.
The story of Romeo and Juliet, who pay for their passion with their lives, has been interpreted in the widest variety of literary and musical genres ever since the Renaissance. Vincenzo Bellini's much too rarely staged Romeo and Juliet opera, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, is far removed from Shakespeare's version: rather than telling the story of a tenderly burgeoning love, the piece is an account of the last 24 hours in the two young people's lives. The underlying mood of the piece is thus one of melancholy - which then develops into a catastrophic maelstrom. The première of the thrilling Zurich production of this bel canto gem, directed by Christof Loy and conducted by Fabio Luisi, was enthusiastically received by critics and audiences alike. The two protagonists also met with acclaim: experience world star Joyce DiDonato in the trouser role of Romeo, with the young Ukrainia soprano Olga Kulchynska at her side as Giulietta.
Valery Gergiev conducts Mariusz Trelinski’s thrilling new production of these rarely heard one-act operas. Anna Netrebko stars as the blind princess of the title in Tchaikovsky’s lyrical work, opposite Piotr Beczala as Vaudémont, the man who wins her love—and wakes her desire to be able to see. Nadja Michael and Mikhail Petrenko are Judith and Bluebeard in Bartók’s gripping psychological thriller about a woman discovering her new husband’s murderous past.
Bellini's radiant retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a beacon in the bel canto tradition. San Francisco Opera's co-production features two of the greatest voices in bel canto together for the first time: mezzo Joyce DiDonato and soprano Nicole Cabell. Their compelling duet is one of the finest marriages between two voices in many, many years. The production, directed by Vincent Broussard and featuring costumes by Christian Lecroix, is captured in brilliant HD.
A contemporary take on the 17th-century genre of the pastiche, this delightful Baroque fantasy brings together some of the greatest arias and ensembles by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Purcell, and other composers with a new English libretto by Jeremy Sams, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The all-star cast is headed by David Daniels as Prospero, Joyce DiDonato as Sycorax, Danielle de Niese as Ariel, Luca Pisaroni as Caliban, and the legendary Plácido Domingo as Neptune. Early music specialist William Christie conducts this dazzling world-premiere production, designed and directed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch.
Massenet composed his opera about Cenerentola nearly 80 years after Rossini did his. And if you are looking for the outburst of the non-stop hilarity and the musical jokes of Rossini, you won't find it here. Also, while the Cendrillon was highly successful and popular in its time, it does not reach up to the artistic and musical levels offered by Massenet's other operas, like Manon, or Thais or Werther. Nevertheless, this is a delightful opera and it is well presented by The Royal Opera. Laurent Pelly created a ingenious setting with movable walls which are covered [in French] with the story of Cinderella, and which open and close book-like.
Audiences went wild for Bartlett Sher’s dynamic production, which found fresh and surprising ways to bring Rossini’s effervescent comedy closer to them than ever before. The stellar cast leapt to the challenge with irresistible energy and bravura vocalism. Juan Diego Flórez is Count Almaviva, who fires off showstopping coloratura as he woos Joyce DiDonato’s spirited Rosina—with assistance from Peter Mattei as the one and only Figaro, Seville’s beloved barber and man-about-town.