Joyce DiDonato
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2016
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway is the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. Winner of two Grammy Awards, she is best known for her interpretations of Handel, Mozart and Rossini operas. Born into a Catholic family in Kansas, she was the second-youngest of seven children. Her love of music was awakened by watching her late father directing the local church choir. Her first ambition was to become a music teacher, but watching a televised performance of Don Giovanni during her third year at college ignited her interest in opera. After acceptance onto Houston Grand Opera's young artist programme, she overhauled her technique and went on to win second place in 1998's Operalia competition.
Her first big role came in 2002 singing Rosina in The Barber of Seville in Paris and she made her debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 2005 at the age of 36. Since then her star has shone brightly and she has performed across the operatic spectrum, from contemporary works, such as Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking to Strauss and Handel.
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:03.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. |
| 0:05.0 | Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Highland Disks from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:09.0 | For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast. |
| 0:14.4 | For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:20.0 | UK slash Radio 4. My castaway this week is the opera singer Joyce Didonato, revered as a mezzar |
| 0:42.3 | soprano of exquisite capabilities. |
| 0:45.2 | The variation in colour she brings to her performances regularly leaves audiences and critics |
| 0:50.0 | alike spellbound in awe and admiration. She opens her mouth and makes it all sound |
| 0:55.1 | well utterly effortless. It hasn't been. At 19 a teacher told her she was singing on |
| 1:01.4 | youth and muscle and that her career would be over |
| 1:04.4 | before it had even begun. At one point in her early 30s she trudged round a dozen |
| 1:09.6 | European opera houses in two weeks and was rejected by every single one. But they make them tough in |
| 1:15.9 | Kansas. The years of dedication, discipline and hard graft meant that when her moment to play the great |
| 1:21.2 | roles finally came, she was ready and then some at |
| 1:25.3 | Covent Garden a few years back she broke her leg on stage and finished the night's |
| 1:29.0 | performance on crutches completing the remainder of the run from a wheelchair. |
| 1:34.1 | She says, on a good night, I have the extraordinary privilege of breathing life into |
| 1:39.2 | masterpieces, and that is a joy. |
| 1:42.8 | What remains tough is the roller coaster thing, hurtling from the high of having audiences |
| 1:46.7 | screaming for you to the low of sleeping alone in some horrible hotel where you're overwhelmed |
| 1:52.1 | by a feeling of unworthiness and therein lies the rub, |
... |
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