JOYCE DIDONATO

When I first heard Kevin Puts’s gorgeous, melodic score for THE HOURS back in 2022, I was blown away, thinking it was almost too good to be true. Could it be a classic? I wanted to hear it again, though not too soon, to give it a chance to settle in its own skin. Lucky us—lucky me—that the Met brought it back so quickly. It reminded me that first impressions are sometimes on the mark. ...

Composers can’t seem to keep away from the Orpheus story. Why not? It’s a juicy one, drawing on the Greek myth about a man who tries to use the power of music to rescue his beloved wife from Hades....

It’s amazing how much emotion John Musto and Mark Campbell have been able to cram in the mere 75 minutes of LATER THE SAME EVENING, a one act opera, which has been on view this past week at Juilliard Opera at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, on West 65 Street, down the block from Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall....

It’s rather surprising, really, for the audience to embrace a contemporary piece like DEAD MAN WALKING, no matter how easily it falls upon the ears, considering the subject matter. In this Ivo van Hove production, it starts with a rape and double murder in a rather graphic piece of film, the use of video being one of van Hove’s trademarks. It ends with a death by lethal injection, also graphically shown in live video....

xThe reviews are in for the premiere production of the new Met season, Dead Man Walking. American composer Jake Heggie’s masterpiece, the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, has its highly anticipated Met premiere, in a haunting new production by Ivo van Hove....

The Metropolitan Opera somehow managed to upstage itself on Thursday, when it offered audiences a spectacular recital by Norwegian soprano Lisa Davidsen, with her excellent musical partner James Baillieu, on piano, 12 days before the company’s official opening night (the Jake Heggie-Terrence McNally DEAD MAN WALKING on the 26th). It’ll be a hard act to follow....

In an opera filled with gorgeous music, it’s hard to beat the end of LA BOHEME’s Act One, with the trifecta of arias about young love. If only tragedy and sadness weren’t going to catch up with the central pair, Mimi and Rodolfo, and their friends, in the succeeding three “tales from the Bohemian life” (as the work’s source material was called). But wait. Director Yuval Sharon to the rescue, with a version that just finished a successful run at Opera Philadelphia, playing out the story in revers...

According to the New York Times, the Metropolitan Opera is set to reduce performances by 10% and withdraw $30 million from an endowment to help the company focus more on new work, which have been selling better than the classics. The company has been struggling with ticket sales post-pandemic....

Last week, when her hours were her own--and not at the Met as Virginia Woolf in THE HOURS by Kevin Puts and Greg Pierce--mezzo Joyce DiDonato (JDD) did what any hard-working opera star would choose to do: She spent three days with five young opera singers at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Room, showing them what’s she’s learned about becoming the best professional they can be and helping them move toward the careers they dream about....

The Met gave birth to a fascinating new opera on Tuesday and it wasn’t a moment too soon to unleash composer Kevin Puts’s THE HOURS on an audience that sometimes seems doomed to die inundated by too many AIDAs, BOHEMEs and CARMENs. The world premiere production of THE HOURS by Puts and Greg Pierce was directed by Phelim McDermott. The cast was a starry one, led by soprano Renee Fleming, soprano Kelli O’Hara and mezzo Joyce DiDonato....

Award-winner Angel Blue started off the proceedings at the Richard Tucker Gala (after Barry Tucker’s usual introduction/ode to his father, the great tenor) with a bang: Puccini’s justly famous aria “Vissi d’arte” from TOSCA. For those of us who’ve only heard her as Bess in Gershwin’s PORGY & BESS at the Met, it was a revelation to hear her lush, velvety voice raise the rafters on the hall, with no warm up....

Joyce DiDonato’s recitals-as-events--where she introduces her personal philosophies as well as her art into the evening--have their ups and downs. Sometimes they are marvelous. Saturday night at Carnegie Hall, the concert, directed by Marie Lambert-Le Bihan with lighting by John Torres, that also served as part of her publicity tour for her new recording, EDEN (Erato), seemed less than the sum of its parts....

The winners of the 50th George London Foundation Competition for young American and Canadian opera singers were announced at the conclusion of the competition’s final round this evening, which took place at Gilder Lehrman Hall at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. While the event is usually held with in-person audience, this year’s audience was virtual. Susanna Phillips, international opera star and 2005 George London Award winner, was the livestream host. ...

In the video series “Sing For Today,” opera star Joyce DiDonato uses song as a lens through which to process, navigate, and respond to current events. In this latest episode, to be released in time for Memorial Day Weekend, she sings the ballad “Danny Boy” and engages in a conversation about grief with Broadway producer Tom Kirdahy, who lost his husband, Terrence McNally, to COVID-19. ...

Any of the wonderful mezzos who appear on the NY Festival of Song’s “How About Those Mezzos!” gala could easily be called “a girl singer” --as in “the females who used to sing with the Big Bands in the ‘40s”--as well under their usual hats as opera singers. The proof: There wasn’t an aria to be heard on the program (which will be available on demand through the end of the month), co-hosted by NYFOS chief Steven Blier and mezzo Rebecca Jo Loeb, an up and comer to watch. (Blier also supplied the p...

Wagnerians in Concert features sopranos Christine Goerke and Elza van den Heever, tenor Andreas Schager, and baritone Michael Volle, live from the Hessisches Staatstheater, in Wiesbaden, Germany, on May 8. Three Divas showcases sopranos Ailyn Pérez and Nadine Sierra and mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, live from the Opéra Royal-Château de Versailles, in France, on May 22. Both concerts will be streamed live on the Met's website at 1pm EST/7pm CET, and will then be available on demand for 14 days. ...

Wagnerians in Concert features sopranos Christine Goerke and Elza van den Heever, tenor Andreas Schager, and baritone Michael Volle, live from the Hessisches Staatstheater, in Wiesbaden, Germany, on May 8. Three Divas showcases sopranos Ailyn Pérez and Nadine Sierra and mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, live from the Opéra Royal-Château de Versailles, in France, on May 22. Both concerts will be streamed live on the Met's website at 1pm EST/7pm CET, and will then be available on demand for 14 days. ...

Soprano Sonya Yoncheva will perform a live concert from the Schussenried Cloister in southwest Germany as part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series. The program features a tour-de-force of arias from Verdi’s Aida and Il Trovatore; Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, La Bohème, and the rarely performed Le Villi; Dvořák’s Rusalka; and Handel’s Rinaldo....

Bass baritone Ryan Speedo Green was named as a winner of the 2021 Beverly Sills Artist Award by the Metropolitan Opera. Given in honor of the famed American soprano, this annual award is given to artists of exceptional ability with rising operatic careers at the Met. ...

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky and tenor Piotr Beczała will perform a live concert on Saturday, January 23, at 7:00pm CET/1:00pm ET, from the historic Stadthalle in Wuppertal, Germany, as part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series....

Soprano Diana Damrau and tenor Joseph Calleja will perform a live concert on Saturday, October 24, at 7:00pm CET/1:00pm ET, at the Royal Palace of Caserta, Italy, as part of the Met Stars Live in Concert series. ...

Mezzo Joyce DiDonato set a new standard for the Met’s Live concert series (hosted by Christine Goerke) with a gorgeous recital from the Jahrhunderthalle in Germany that was broadcast live on September 12 and will be available on demand through the Met’s website, now extended through October 23....

It's hardly a secret that during the Met's shutdown, the company has been treating audiences with nightly telecasts of everything from the company's current 'Live In HD' series to some scratchy videos that still had decent sound. All of them, however, can also be found on the Met's online subscription series, THE MET OPERA ON DEMAND, along with some audio highlights of extraordinary Saturday afternoon broadcasts. It's worth shelling out the money for this kind of quality....

The Met has announced a specially-curated, three-week schedule for its Nightly Met Opera Streams, a free series of encore Live in HD presentations and classic telecasts streamed on the company website during the coronavirus closure. The schedule includes an All-Verdi week, a 20th-Century Classics week, and an All-French week....

Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen will perform a live concert on Saturday, August 29, at 7pm CET/1pm ET, from the royal Oscarshall Palace in Oslo, where the soprano sang after winning Norway's Queen Sonja Competition in 2015. ...