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DiDonato’s Triumphant Return Philadelphia
Independence Seaport Museum
03/30/2008 -
Antonio Vivaldi : Col piacer della mia fede from Arsilda Regina di Ponto
Vedró con mio diletto ferro from Il Giustino
Da quell che ha svenato from Il furnace
Ernest Chausson: Hébé, Sérénade, Le Colibri, Les Papillons
Joaquin Turina: Poema en forma de canciones
Aaron Copland: Poems of Emily Dickinson
George Gershwin: The Man I Love, By Strauss
Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano), David Zobel (piano)
Joyce DiDonato left Philadelphia a dozen years ago after completing her vocal studies at the Academy of Vocal Arts. Sunday afternoon, she returned in triumph. In a recital sponsored by the Philadelphia Chamber Music, DiDonato displayed her mastery of a broad range of music.
DiDonato barely stepped onto the stage before the audience at the Independence Seaport Museum discovered two things. First, she is an expressive singer who colors words and conveys character with her voice. Second, she is an adventurous recitalist who knows how to put together a program that displays her artistry as well as her musical versatility.
In her recital with French-born pianist David Zobel, the American mezzo-soprano ranged from the Italian Baroque (Antonio Vivaldi) to 19th-century France (Ernest Chausson) and 20th-century Spain (Joaquin Turina). After intermission came American songs by Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. The applause from an appreciative audience built from one selection to the next and culminated in an ovation that drew two encores.
Throughout, the accompanist and singer formed a close musical partnership. The Philadelphia performance followed recitals in Chicago, New York and Quebec.
An aria from Vivaldi's Arsilda Regina di Ponto warmed up both the singer and her accompanist. DiDonato dashed fleetly through all the roulades and rapid divisions in the aria, but her tone was a bit reedy and unfocused. Zobel's piano sounded too loud. Both artists found their form in a long-breathed aria from Vivaldi's Il Giustino. Zobel cradled DiDonato's voice with loving care as she spun out the vocal lines in a glowing flow of beautifully shaded tone. Her hushed and exquisitely sustained singing held the audience in total silence. She displayed another interpretive mode as she launched a virtuoso showpiece from Vivaldi’s Il Farnace. Pressing her lyric voice to its limits, DiDonato conveyed the anger and rage of a woman lamenting the deaths of her husband and son. Exploiting the woodwind timbres in her voice, she sang this coruscating aria with a blend of tonal intensity and vocal virtuosity that drew excited applause from the audience.
Then, DiDonato and her accompanist shifted seamlessly from Italian opera to French chanson in a group of four songs by Chausson. Her warm-toned voice took on a new array of expressive colors. Singing exquisitely, she shaped a lovely performance of Le colibri.
Turina's songs invited the singer to color her voice more boldly. Taking up the challenge, she sang expressively as her voice etched the rhythms and caught the shifting moods in Turina’s songs. In Cantares, she sang with such expressive intensity, someone in the audience cried out “Olé!”
After intermission, DiDonato switched from an elegant emerald-green gown to a black, strapless sheath dress. She also let down her long blond hair for the American songs. DiDonato proved an expressive advocate for Copland's Poems by Emily Dickinson. She found a vivid interpretive manner for each of the 8 songs. Her voice pealed out intently in Why do they shut me out of Heaven? but sounded almost conversational in Dear March, come in!
Totally relaxed and in complete vocal control, she wrapped her melting voice around Gershwin's The Man I Love. Then she capped the afternoon with an ebullient performance of By Strauss. Gershwin's song also gave Zobel the chance to revel in several big tunes from Strauss' operas.
The audience demanded - and got - two encores. DiDonato soared through the Composer's ecstatic paean to music from Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. Then she gave a breathtaking performance of the rondo finale from Rossini's La Cenerentola. Singing with breathless brio, DiDonato ripped through the ornamented vocal lines with abandon. The audience responded with another ovation.
Welcome home, Joyce DiDonato!
Robert Baxter
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