Zombie Joyce Oats

In spring 2011, the first-ever performances at New York's Metropolitan Opera of Rossini's Le Comte Ory brought standing ovations and critical-acclaim. The spectacular trio of Juan Diego Florez, Diana Damrau and Joyce DiDonato ignited vocal and theatrical fireworks. Le Comte Ory tells the story of a libidinous and cunning nobleman who disguises himself first as a hermit and then as a nun ("Sister Colette") in order to gain access to the virtuous Countess Adele, whose brother is away at the Crusades. The 2011 Met production was directed by the Tony Award-winning Broadway director Bartlett Sher, who in recent years has also staged Il barbiere di Siviglia and Les Contes d'Hoffman for the Met. Sher presented the action as an opera within an opera, updated the action by a few centuries and giving the costume designer, Catherine Zuber, the opportunity to create some particularly extravagant headgear. Juan Diego Florez starred as the title role while Diana Damrau plays his love interest, Countess Adele, and Joyce DiDonato was in breeches as his pageboy Isolier. The trio had appeared in Sher's production of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia.

EDEN is an invitation to return to our roots.It is an overture to engage with the sheer perfection of the world around us,to consider if we are connecting as profoundly as we can to the pure essence of our being.It is a clarion call to contemplate if our collective suffering isn’t perhaps linked to the aching separation from something primal within and around us. This is a vivid musical exploration through the centuries to remember and to create a new EDEN from within.

To open the Met’s 2017–18 season, powerhouse soprano Sondra Radvanovsky tackled one of opera’s most fearsome roles, the title druid priestess of Bellini’s Norma, who wrestles with love and betrayal before making the ultimate sacrifice on a funeral pyre. Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato sang Norma’s friend and rival, Adalgisa, in Sir David McVicar’s evocative production.

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato has gained a strong following with novel, even fearless programs, flawlessly executed. The stimulus for In War & Peace was extramusical: DiDonato temporarily shelved a different project in the wake of the terrorist attack at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris. The concept is ambitious: the booklet includes quotes about finding peace from figures as varied as Patrick Stewart, Riccardo Muti, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and an inmate at New York's Sing Sing prison. Does it directly connect with DiDonato's program of Baroque arias? Listeners will have to decide for themselves, but the good news is that the program stands on its own.