Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano

Winner of the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo, Joyce DiDonato entrances audiences and critics alike across the globe, and has been proclaimed ‘perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation’ by The New Yorker. With a voice ‘nothing less than 24-carat gold’ according to the Times, DiDonato has soared to the top of the industry as both a performer and a fierce arts advocate, gaining international prominence in operas by Rossini, Handel and Mozart, as well as through her wide-ranging, acclaimed discography.
Born in Kansas and a graduate of Wichita State University and The Academy of Vocal Arts, Joyce DiDonato trained on the young artist programmes of San Francisco, Houston, and Santa Fe opera companies. Her signature parts include the bel canto roles of Rossini, leading the Financial Times to declare her Elena in La Donna del Lago, ‘simply the best singing I’ve heard in years’.

Much in demand on the recital circuit, in 2013 DiDonato was acclaimed for her debut recital tour of South America, where she will return in the summer of 2014. Recently she has appeared in concert and recital in Berlin, Vienna, Toulouse, Milan and Aspen. She rounded off the season as the guest singer at the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.
In opera she appeared last season as Romeo I Capuleti e i Montecchi for San Francisco Opera and the Bayerische Staatsoper, in the title role of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda for the Metropolitan Opera New York, and as Elena La donna del lago at Covent Garden and for Santa Fe Opera. Highlights in the current season include I Capuleti e i Montecchi in her native Kansas City, Cendrillon at the Liceu Barcelona, La Clemenza di Tito at the Lyric Opera Chicago, and a return to the Metropolitan Opera as Angelina La Cenerentola. DiDonato will end the current season in the title role of Maria Stuarda at the Royal Opera House.

An exclusive recording artist with Erato/Warner Classics, DiDonato’s Grammy-Award-winning solo CD, Diva Divo, comprises arias by male and female characters, celebrating the rich dramatic world of the mezzo-soprano. Her next recording, Drama Queens, was exceptionally well received, both on disc and on several international tours. A retrospective of her first ten years of recordings entitled ReJoyce! was released in August 2013.

Other honors include the highly-prized Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards in 2010, as well as Recital of the Year for the album Colbran, the Muse. She is an Inductee of the Gramophone Hall of Fame and has collected a German Echo Klassik Award as Female Singer of the Year, in addition to the Mets Beverly Sills Award, the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer of the Year, and citations from Operalia and the Richard Tucker and George London Foundations. She was recently awarded the prestigious Premio Franco Abbiati Award for Best Singer 2011.