LONDON (Reuters) - On stage and off,
you don't want to tangle with Joyce DiDonato - American soprano
extraordinaire and practiced kickboxer too.
The 45-year-old diva has been leaving audiences at the Royal
Opera House in Covent Garden roaring for her singing and
performing of the hugely demanding bel canto (beautiful singing)
role of the doomed Queen Maria Stuarda - Mary Queen of Scots -
in the second of Donizetti's three Tudor operas.
There's hardly a more gripping and dramatic scene in opera than
the one at the end of Act Two when DiDonato as Maria has a
knock-down, drag-out confrontation with Queen Elizabeth I, sung
by the up-and-coming Italian soprano Carmen Giannattasio.
They spit insults at each other, DiDonato hurls "vil bastarda"
(evil bastard) at her rival and pulls the tablecloth from under
Elizabeth's picnic lunch, sweeping all the food and dishes to
the floor - all this in the full knowledge that it will ensure
she has her head chopped off.
"I feel completely shattered," DiDonato, changed out of her
16th-century-style royal frock into a cocktail dress, told
Reuters at a reception after the opening night on Saturday.
"This is the most difficult role I sing so I always have to step
back a bit and make sure I've got some bit of me that is engaged
just in navigating the vocalizing ... but there are two moments
when I just lose it and I'm really not present anymore, and one
of them is the confrontation scene," she said.
Otherwise DiDonato - who practices the martial art of kickboxing
to keep fit because she finds fitness machines boring and shows
off her arm muscles to prove it - thinks that in this production
she has finally nailed a role she has also played at the Houston
Opera and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
"The first time, in Houston, the part was 'singing me' kind of
from beginning to end but I got through it. I did a lot of work
and when I got to New York I'd say there was about 16 percent of
the opera that was still 'singing me' and at some point I just
had to get through those particular moments.
"Here I finally feel like now it's mine, I'm choosing in every
moment how I want to sing it rather than this is the only way I
can do it and I've never felt that with another role. This has
been the biggest learning curve for me."
Here's what else she had to say about her long climb to the top of a
cut-throat profession, her upcoming South American tour and new
album after winning a Grammy in 2012 for "Diva Divo":
Q: You didn't have one of those immediate career successes,
and didn't really hit your stride until about a decade ago, when
London and European audiences embraced you before you'd become a
star at home. Now you are a regular at the Met and sometimes host
the global HD broadcasts. What's it like being at the top?
A: If you're at the top the bottom comes very quickly
(laughs). But really, the only way through the time when you're not
getting work and when it's hard and when things aren't coming is to
go back and do the work you have to do. The work is what will get
you through and if a singer starts to fail there's no way you can
hide it, you have to work with what you have.
Q: You've got a big South American tour coming up and a new
album of bel canto songs from Naples, but from some little known
composers. Why this flirtation with the southern climes?
A: I was in South America just two years ago and after my
first concert in Santiago I was so surprised that first of all it
was sold out and then they literally showered the stage with flowers
... These audience were thirsty, and especially the young people, so
after the first concert I called my manager and said let's find
another tour and we booked it ...
There's a passion, an unfiltered joy and exuberance and that will
lead me into the launch of "Stella di Napoli" which is my next album
and really it's sort of an homage to bel canto opera.
(Writing by Michael Roddy; Editing by Gareth Jones)
