Biography

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, a major 21st century opera star, is known for the breadth of her repertory and her dazzling coloratura. She is especially associated with Baroque opera, Mozart, and bel canto opera of the early 19th century, but she has also championed contemporary works, performed song recitals, and ventured beyond classical music. DiDonato was born Joyce Flaherty in Prairie Village, Kansas, near Kansas City, on February 13, 1969. DiDonato was her first husband's surname. The daughter of an architect father and a music teacher mother, she attended Wichita State University, majoring in music education and planning to become a high school teacher. Her turn toward opera came after she watched a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni on television and was cast in a university production of the Johann Strauss II operetta Die Fledermaus. After graduating in 1992, she enrolled at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, and in 1995, she was accepted into the Apprentice Singer program of the Santa Fe Opera. She participated in young artist programs at the Houston Grand Opera (where she made her recording debut in 1997 in a production of Michael Daugherty's Jackie O) and the San Francisco Opera, winning several prizes even amidst a vocal crisis that saw her rebuild her technique from the ground up. In 1999, DiDonato made her professional stage debut with the Houston Grand Opera, appearing in Tod Machover's Resurrection. After that, things began to happen very quickly for the singer; she appeared at Milan, Italy's La Scala as Angelina in Rossini's La cenerentola in 2000, as Rosina in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Opéra Bastille in Paris in 2001, and as the Fox in Leoš Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen at England's Glyndebourne Opera in 2003. In 2004, DiDonato and soprano Patrizia Ciofi released the album Amor e gelosia: Handel Operatic Duets on the Virgin Classics label. DiDonato has often performed and recorded Handel's operatic music, issuing a solo album of Handel arias, Furore, in 2009, conducted by early music specialist Christophe Rousset. She has also often been heard in Rossini's operas, in lighter comic roles as well as those requiring dramatic power. Her debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera came during the 2005-2006 season as Cherubino in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, and she has returned to the house regularly. DiDonato is a champion of contemporary music, having recorded opera and vocal music by Jake Heggie on several occasions. In 2009, she fell on stage during a performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia and broke her fibula but insisted on continuing the performance (and giving subsequent performances from a wheelchair). Her 2012 recital album Diva Divo won a Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Performance. DiDonato's recordings have grown wider in scope as her career has proceeded; 2019's Songplay incorporated elements of tango and jazz, as well as a passage in which the singer made herself sound like a freshman voice major in college. In 2021, she recorded Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise, D. 911, from the perspective of the woman to whom the texts were addressed. In 2023, DiDonato was heard on an Erato recording of Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette and Cléopâtre. By that time, her recording catalog comprised well over 100 albums. ~ James Manheim, Rovi