Tag

Joyce DiDonato

La Donna Del Lago – Tanti Affetti

March 15, 2015

Someone recently said that there’s more to Rossini’s La Donna Del Lago than ‘Tanti Affetti’, the aria for the opera’s title character that concludes the work. Well if there is, it doesn’t amount to much. The opera might best be considered an exercise book for bel canto singing rather than an emotionally and artistically rewarding […]

La Cenerentola in HD

May 10, 2014

Rossini is life. He reinvented Italian opera when he was 20. And every Italian composer who followed him is in his debt. Today’s HD telecast of Rossini’s version of Cinderella showed why. Cenerentola (Rossini calls her Angelina) has been done 38 times by the Met, all in Cesare Lievi’s 1997 production. His semi-surreal sets and Maurizio […]

Maria Stuarda in HD

January 20, 2013

Donizetti’s opera composed in 1834 was initially the victim of censorship, bowdlerization, and finally neglect. It was revived in a 1958 production in Bergamo, the composer’s hometown. The opera’s autograph was discovered in Sweden in 1987. Based on this score a critical edition was prepared and premiered in Bergamo in 1989. This run at the Met is the […]

Le Comte Ory in HD

April 10, 2011

Rossini’s penultimate opera, Le Comte Ory, received its first staging at the Metropolitan Opera this season. This is a charming work that is Rossini just below his best – which means that it’s very good, indeed. The opera needs three virtuoso singers well versed in the bel canto style. In Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato, […]

Which Leg Bone Did She Break?

July 8, 2009

Last Saturday American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato fell during a performance of Rossini’s Barber of Seville and broke her leg. The singer described the event on her blog and posted a picture of herself with her new cast. In the grand tradition of the stage she finished the performance and is singing subsequent shows from a […]