Mezzo-Soprano Joyce DiDonato Curates Six-Concert Perspectives Series At Carnegie Hall

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato returns to Carnegie Hall for a series of Perspectives concerts throughout the 2019-2020 season, highlighting her full range of vocal artistry as well as her work as an educator.

Ms. DiDonato's Perspectives kicked off during the summer of 2019 when she joined Carnegie Hall's National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYO-USA) on tour across Europe with her longtime collaborator conductor Sir Antonio Pappano in performances of Berlioz's Les nuits d'été.

On Friday, November 15 at 8:00 p.m., she continues her series with one of her specialties: singing Berlioz's La mort de Cléopâtre, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti. The program, featuring music inspired by Rome, also includes Bizet's rarely performed Roma and Respighi's Pines of Rome. The concert is part of the Carnegie Hall Live broadcast and digital series with a live radio broadcast on WQXR 105.9 FM in New York and online at wqxr.org and carnegiehall.org/wqxr. Produced by WQXR and Carnegie Hall and co-hosted by WQXR's Jeff Spurgeon and Clemency Burton-Hill, Carnegie Hall Live broadcasts include behind-the-scenes access to the artists and broadcast team, connecting national and international fans to the music and to each other.

The following week, on Friday, November 22 at 8:00 p.m., she joins fellow Perspectives artist Yannick Nézet-Séguin with the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal singing arias from Mozart's La clemenza di Tito on a program that also includes Bruckner's Symphony No. 4, "Romantic" in the orchestra's Carnegie Hall debut. She collaborates again with Mr. Nézet-Séguin on piano on Sunday, December 15 at 2:00 p.m. singing Schubert's powerful song cycle Winterreise. The December 15 concert will be webcast live, free of charge, to a worldwide audience on medici.tv and carnegiehall.org/medici. The collaboration between Carnegie Hall and medici.tv-making live webcasts of select Carnegie Hall concerts available to music lovers everywhere-began in fall 2014 and has since showcased performances by some of the world's most celebrated artists. These webcasts have been enthusiastically received, reaching over 8 million views over the past five seasons with audience members originating from more than 180 countries and territories around the world.

Ms. DiDonato joins New Yorkers of all ages onstage in Zankel Hall on Sunday, April 5 at 7:00 p.m. for All Together: Songs for Joy. This special concert features music written as part of Carnegie Hall's worldwide exploration of the "Ode to Joy" in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 and its season-long celebration honoring the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth. The young musicians will share their own perspectives on joy, a universal emotion that binds communities together.

Also that week, April 6-8 at 4:00 p.m., Ms. DiDonato returns to lead her annual series of public master classes for young opera singers, webcast via medici.tv, presented by Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute (WMI) in the Weill Music Room.

The following week, Ms. DiDonato returns to Zankel Hall joined by some of her dearest musical friends: flutist Tara Helen O'Connor, clarinetist Anthony McGill, harpist Emmanuel Ceysson, pianist Bryan Wagorn, and the Brentano String Quartet for A French Soirée, presenting works by Ravel, Debussy, and the premiere of a new arrangement of Debussy's Chansons de Bilitis by Jake Heggie commissioned by Carnegie Hall on Monday, April 13 at 7:30 p.m.

Her Perspectives culminates on Tuesday, May 26, at 8:00 p.m. with a recital in Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage titled Joyce DiDonato: My Favorite Things with conductor Maxim Emelyanychev leading Il Pomo d'Oro, the dynamic Italian ensemble that specializes in Baroque performance practice, in selections by Monteverdi, Gluck, Handel, and Purcell.

Ms. DiDonato is one of a handful of artists who have been invited to curate a second Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall. Her first Perspectives was presented throughout the Hall's 2014-2015 season. Now in its 21st season, Carnegie Hall's Perspectives series is an artistic initiative in which select musicians are invited to explore their own musical individuality and create their own personal concert series through collaborations with other musicians and ensembles. In the 2019-2020 season, Perspectives series will be curated by four acclaimed artists: conductors Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, and singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo.

Previous Perspectives artists have included Senegalese vocalist Youssou NDOUR; Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso; Indian classical tabla player Zakir Hussain; experimental rocker David Byrne; singer-songwriters Rosanne Cash and James Taylor; as well as conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim; conductors Pierre Boulez, James Levine, Sir Simon Rattle, David Robertson, and Michael Tilson Thomas; violinists Janine Jansen, Gidon Kremer, Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Christian Tetzlaff; cellist Yo-Yo Ma; pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Leif Ove Andsnes, Martha Argerich, Emanuel Ax, Evgeny Kissin, Maurizio Pollini, Sir András Schiff, Peter Serkin, Daniil Trifonov, Mitsuko Uchida, and Yuja Wang; sopranos Renée Fleming and Dawn Upshaw; mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato; bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff; the Emerson String Quartet; the Kronos Quartet; and early music ensemble L'Arpeggiata.

For more information on her 2019-2020 Perspectives, please visit: carnegiehall.org/didonato.