Puts The Hours

Sols; Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra / Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Erato 

Kevin Puts’s The Hours doesn’t demand to be seen and studied. It just needs to be heard. Three plot lines revolve around the novel Mrs Dalloway, all flowing with emotionally intuitive music full of hovering, unseen choral voices. Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato and Kelli O’Hara inhabit separate plots but unite in a glorious trio. David Patrick Stearns

Read the Gramophone review

Financial Times

“DiDonato’s very measured and ceremonious performance may be the biggest selling point of the current release. As ever, she phrases intelligently and despite the occasional harshness in tone manages to imbue every word with a distinctly emotional subtext. Her “Prologue” then ranks among the more idiosyncratic on record, not as lush as Jessye Norman’s (under Riccardo Muti) but just as memorable in terms of musical ingenuity, including a wealth of shading and dynamic variation.”

Operawire

“Celle-ci est un atout non négligeable, l’expressivité de DiDonato étant relayée par la direction très raffinée de John Nelson (superbe « Méditation » !).”

Le Devoir

“La mezzo américaine en livre une version d’anthologie, bouleversante par la vie dont elle anime la moindre phrase, le moindre mot. L’œuvre est géniale, la chanteuse touche au sublime tant le théâtre et la musique sont intimement liés, la voix répondant à toutes les intentions de l’actrice. Du très grand art.”

Première Loge

“ … an interpretation that we believe ranks without a hitch on the tops of the discography, very popular peaks (Baker, Norman, Graham , Gens) and perhaps even in the lead, so much does she win the support in the five parts of this scene whose audacity frightened the jury of the Prix de Rome in 1829.

The pain, the noble wrath of the queen unfolds over the entire length of a voice leaning on sepulchral bass, rising impassively towards powerfully stamped trebles.
We know which Dido and which Marguerite Joyce DiDonato was already in this Strasbourg series. We will find her legato, her mastery of long Berliozian lines in the Lento cantabile , “Ah how far away these days are”, and John Nelson breathes with her and makes the orchestra breathe in this staircase theme, whose mid-repeat -voice will be even more astonishing (with the coquetry of a pianissimo descending coloratura). The fierce pride of the queen, her pain, everything passes through the colors of the voice.

The last words will graze the inaudible in an agony that the orchestra will watch out for… Long silences arranged by Nelson, an assumed dramatism right down to the last words “Cleopatra, by… leaving… life… becomes worthy of… Caesar again! » followed by the last sentence, also dying, of the double basses… All very inspired, and skilfully constructed. Great art.”

Forum Opéra

“Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato once again heads the solo team, her every word in the Strophes section of the Introduction carrying weight. The booklet contains just the French texts, with no translations, but you scarcely need them when the vocal lines are projected with such emotional engagement and openness.

DiDonato yet again demonstrates her extraordinary gift for singing the French composer’s music with emotional engagement and coupled with superb technique. From the opening pages, where she really nails the imperiousness of the Egyptian queen, to the barely whispered final words as she succumbs to the asp’s poison, this is a thrillingly compelling performance.”

EuropaDisc

“DiDonato identifiziert sich in hochdramatischer Attacke und glühender Intensität mit der Rolle der ägyptischen Königin kurz vor ihrem Tod und reiht sich damit… in die Reihe der großen Berlioz-Primadonnen… Den faszinierenden Monolog aus unendlichem Leid, bitterer Schmach, Selbstanklage und Erlösung gestaltet DiDonato als Psychogramm einer zum Selbstmord bereiten Frau. Besonders überwältigt die Meditation „Grands Pharaons, nobles Lagides“, die zum schönsten und wuchtigsten gehört, was Berlioz überhaupt komponiert hat. In verstörend realistischer Lautmalerei und opernhafter Eindringlichkeit endet die Szene mit dem Biss einer giftigen Schlange in die Brust und der Agonie der legendären Königin.”

Online Merker

“De succesvolle Berlioz-serie van specialist John Nelson en het Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg heeft een vervolg gekregen. Hoofdmoot vormt Roméo et Juliette, de uitgebreide symfonie met vocale bijdragen. Solisten zijn Cyrille Dubois, Christopher Maltman en Joyce DiDonato. Die laatste zingt ook de dramatische cantate La mort de Cléopâtre, waarmee Berlioz alweer niet de Prix de Rome won. Voor ons nu onbegrijpelijk. De grillige partituur krijg van Nelson het volle pond, en laat het drama maar over aan DiDonato. Haar aanroepen van de dode farao’s bezorgt kippenvel.”

Trouw

“L’intervention de Joyce DiDonato dans le premier mouvement de la symphonie dramatique est lumineuse, angélique, aux accents perlés des harpes imitant la lyre antique. Elle sait trouver le ton désincarné qui sied, d’un vibrato filé réduit au strict nécessaire.”

Ôlyrix

‘Eden’ 

Joyce DiDonato mez Il Pomo d’Oro / Maxim Emelyanychev 

Erato 

An album to focus us on our relationship to nature, delivered with passion by Joyce DiDonato and her colleagues – a powerful example of how music can relate so well to our wider world.   

Read the review

● Joyce DiDonato’s bold new musical mission – ‘I’m not really interested in superficiality right now, there’s plenty of that’: DiDonato’s new project asks us to reconnect with the natural world, finds Martin Cullingford – and what better way to do that than simply to stop and listen?

‘Eden’ 

Joyce DiDonato mez Il Pomo d’Oro / Maxim Emelyanychev 

Erato 

An album to focus us on our relationship to nature, delivered with passion by Joyce DiDonato and her colleagues – a powerful example of how music can relate so well to our wider world.   

Read the review

● Joyce DiDonato’s bold new musical mission – ‘I’m not really interested in superficiality right now, there’s plenty of that’: DiDonato’s new project asks us to reconnect with the natural world, finds Martin Cullingford – and what better way to do that than simply to stop and listen?

NPR

“An album to focus us on our relationship to nature, delivered with passion by Joyce DiDonato and her colleagues – a powerful example of how music can relate so well to our wider world. I’m brought to tearful wonder by the album’s close. DiDonato’s farewell, ‘Ombra mai fù’ from Handel’s Serse, is a performance so beautiful that it makes your insides ache.”

Gramophone

“Comment la musique pourrait-elle nous amener à redécouvrir l’essentiel au plus profond de nous-mêmes ? Par le mystère qu’elle nous laisse percevoir, avec, par exemple, l’équilibre parfait de la mélodie Ombra mai fu de Haendel, que Joyce DiDonato chante divinement.”

Le Figaro

“Joyce DiDonato’s formidable powers continue to extend far beyond the concert hall… This is a highly commendable recording that commands serious attention for both its music and its message.”

Classical Music Magazine

“Would that every musician could approach their careers with the thoughtfulness and musical excellence Joyce DiDonato brings to hers.”

Arts Fuse

“Diese Frau singt nicht nur virtuos und ausdrucksstark, sie hat auch etwas zu sagen: Die amerikanische Mezzosopranistin Joyce DiDonato ist ein Megastar der Opernwelt, aber ihr Sendungsbewusstsein geht weit über die perfekte Koloratur hinaus: Zentral ist immer ihr persönliches Engagement. Als “kämpferische Optimistin” gibt DiDonato die Hoffnung nicht auf, die Welt durch Musik ein kleines Stück besser machen zu können. Oder eben “grüner” – diese Absicht steht hinter ihrem neuen Album “Eden”: 16 Stücke aus dem paradiesischen Ur-Garten, ein musikalischer Hochgenuss mit aufrüttelnder Botschaft.”

BR Klassik

“Joyce DiDonato’s formidable powers continue to extend far beyond the concert hall… Programmed with depth and imagination, the album explores humankind’s interaction with nature from a range of perspectives, deftly incorporating some four centuries of music… It is perhaps no surprise that the various 18th-century works find DiDonato on especially thrilling form, from the gorgeous tumult she summons in ‘Toglierò le sponde al mare’… Yet DiDonato shines, too, in the more contemporary works.”

BBC Magazine

“The various compositions from often very different periods of time are arranged on ‘Eden’ by Joyce DiDonato in such a way that it seems as if they were composed especially for this purpose.”

Reporters Online

“She’s on top form here, the purity and incisiveness of her lithe instrument giving voice to composers as varied as Ives, Mysliveček, and Wagner, as well as the baroque masters she’s built her career on. The album opens with Ives’ The Unanswered Question, which sees the mezzo in celestial vocalise, singing lines originally composed for the trumpet.”

Limelight Magazine

“Her creamy sound, precise, nuanced diction, and ability to convey intensity through stillness communicate deep sincerity. It’s a beautiful album.”

Classical Voice North America

“The ink is still wet on Rachel Portman’s The First Morning of the World and DiDonato lightens her sound considerably to match the sweeping strings of the song. In the first of Mahler’s Rückert Lieder that she offers, DiDonato blanches her tone to apostrophise the simple beauty of the scent of linden. And for Copland’s I, Nature, the gentlest mother, she sings with purity in such a high tessitura that one would be forgiven for guessing her to be a soprano as she flutes against the intertwined woodwind. Likewise, ‘As with rosy steps the morn’ from Handel’s Theodora, where she provides a hushed reverence of line and decorates the second verse with a sense of purpose, cleverly maintaining the simplicity of the aria.”

Rhinegold

It’s an interpretation that repays repeated listening, early highlights along the way –Frühlingstraum combining crystalline delicacy and cut-glass sharpness to poignant effect, Der Lindenbaum an exquisitely innocent lullaby in all but name – deepening in impact and meaning with each encounter.”

Limelight Magazine

“Drawing on her formidable range of vocal colour, DiDonato captures the drama within each song, and across the cycle… Any fan will enjoy the insight DiDonato brings. You might go back to your favourite tenor afterwards, but you’ll have thought about this masterpiece anew.”

The Guardian

“When great artists undertake Winterreise it is a transporting experience, and we’re lucky that DiDonato has added her interpretation to the performance tradition.”

New York Classical Review

“Few women sing Schubert’s desolate, passionate anti-odyssey of the rejected male lover, but when they do it can be memorable. Never more so than in this superb performance, where Nézet-Séguin is the perfect companion. DiDonato has a voice of rare beauty, but even more heartbreaking than the loveliness of her singing is her endlessly varied dramatic colouring of the text. Incomparable.”

The Sunday Times

“There’s a luxuriousness, not least in the healthy shine of DiDonato’s bright mezzo, that suggests these wintry episodes are being imagined from within the woman’s warm and cosy home, perhaps many years later. And it feels natural, in the context, to have moments of near-operatic grandeur: one imagines DiDonato collapsing dramatically to the ground in despair at the end of ‘Erstarrung’, for example.”

Gramophone

“DiDonato has never sounded better. She moves flawlessly from mere whispers of sound to fortes with commendable ease, and dispenses the few quick figures that Schubert throws at her with the ease of a bel canto specialist. The recording itself is excellent, conveying the fabled Carnegie Hall acoustics and sense of occasion.

Nézet-Séguin is DiDonato’s equal partner. The way he ends the second song, “Der Wetterfahne” (The weathervane) is as special as the manner in which he conveys the sense of flight in “Die Krähe” (The crow). He underscores the ominous essence of “Im Dorfe” (In the village), the mournful beginning of “Der Wegweiser” (The signpost), and the sacredness in “Das Wirtshaus” (The inn). Equally important, he knows exactly when to play the supportive accompanist and when to move to the foreground without attracting undue attention to himself. Of both him and DiDonato, one could ask for no more.

From the very first song, the pain in DiDonato’s voice is unmistakable. So is the special care she takes with dynamics and word painting. Fully inhabiting the woman who is reading the young man’s final journal, her heartbreak occasionally impels her to slow down as the young man’ words sink in.”

San Francisco Classical Voice

“Le « Winterreise » de Schubert réunit 24 mélodies sur des textes de Wilhhelm Müller évoquant le désespoir d’un jeune hommeau cœur brisé dans un paysage hivernal désolé. Principalement chantée par des hommes, cette œuvre admirable a stimulé le sens du défi de la mezzo-soprano Joyce Di Donato.

Accompagnée parle pianiste (et chef d’orchestre)Yannick Nézet-Séguin elle nous raconte ce «Voyage d’hiver»intense et troublant. Enregistré au Carnegie Hall, à New-York, en décembre 2019, ce moment de grâce nous transporte et nous fascine plus que jamais.”

La Dépèche du Midi

“The opening Gute Nacht (track 1) is transposed down a full step to C minor, which blankets the song in a darker hue. The consistency of the accompanimental figure normally makes me see the pianist as a distant but reminiscent bystander, but Nézet-Séguin takes a more forward stance. He bends the tempos slightly at certain points and shapes the dynamics correspondingly – a fitting choice, given DiDonato’s equally emotive approach that introduces a raw heartache to the underlying plaintiveness. The duo plays extremely well to Schubert’s color changes, especially in places like the simultaneously delicate and heartfelt major section.”

The Classical Review

“Joyce DiDonato s’empare avec maestria de la partition, nous guidant air par air, comme autant d’étapes d’un voyage. La musicalité du chant et le chant de la musicalité se révèlent dès le premier air, grâce à l’expressivité de la voix, merveilleusement accompagnée par le piano de Yannick Nézet-Seguin, second guide de l’aventure. Les lieder s’enchaînent, telles les pierres d’un chemin. C’est aussi un voyage dans l’intime grâce à l’interprétation de la cantatrice qui insufflent des sentiments vifs, nous happant par une syllabe ou un ton sur lequel elle s’attarde légèrement, créant une émotion palpable par son chant, vecteur de l’humain dans ce cycle de 24 chansons pour voix et piano.”

Opera Online

#1 on Billboard.com – Traditional Classical Albums – Week of May 8, 2021

Handel: Agrippina

Joyce DiDonato, Franco Fagioli, Elsa Benoit, Luca Pisaroni, Jakub Józef Orliński, Andrea Mastroni, Carlo Vistoli, Biagio Pizzuti, Marie-Nicole Lemieux; Il P’omo d’Oro/Maxim Emelyanychev
Erato 9029533658 229:41 mins (3 discs)

‘DiDonato commands the vocal pyrotechnics, dramatic depth, personal charisma and absolute diction that her role demands’

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DiDonato’s rendition of the soliloquising aria Pensieri, voi mi tormentate, singularly affecting and so piercingly phrased, must be a career highlight.”

The Times

“Over the course of the opera’s three hours plus, DiDonato has the opportunity to show everything she can do. She uses her ease at the top of her voice to spin beautiful lines and sharpens Agrippina’s claws with her fearsome ornamentation, including a few places where she dashes down to a low, baritonal register full of menace.”

Financial Times

Armed with a clear and classical voice, Joyce DiDonato mixes Italian arias with jazz standards on this clear as Waterford crystal collection She teams with an impressive lineup arranged by pianist Craig Terry, which includes Chuck Israels/b, Jimmy Madison/dr, Lautaro Greco/band and Charlie Porter/tp-fh. Her enunciation of Italian gems such as “Tu Lo Sai” and “Vedro con mio Dioletto” is lovely and warm, glowing like a full moon. She does some rich intro work on “Lullaby of Birdland” before veering into a swing groove, and her delivery of “(I’m Afraid) The Masquerade is Over” is uptown styling. Porter’s horn adds atmosphere on Ellington’s “(In My) Solitude” with Greco’s bandoneon taking you to a lonely piazza during the show tune “Will He Like Me?” and lilting “Quella Fiamma.” Polished and shiny.

DiDonato takes a handful of Italian Baroque numbers, beginning with excerpts from the “24 Italian Songs and Arias” collection that every vocal student has to get past, and recasts them as jazz standards – the rhythms loosened but still electrifying, the harmonies richly colored without straying too far from the original.

And because DiDonato is such an exquisite singer – so technically commanding, so expressive, so canny in her adornments – the result never seems gimmicky. These are genuine reinterpretations, shaped with style and fidelity, and the inclusion of familiar jazz tunes by George Shearing, Duke Ellington and others only deepens the sense of wonder. Pianist Craig Terry leads a formidable instrumental ensemble, but it is DiDonato who gives this marvelous project its juice.

Datebook – San Francisco Chronicle