Opera on WRTI

Joyce DiDonato's performance in the title role of Mary, Queen of Scots, "will be pointed to as a model of singing," full of  "plush richness and aching beauty," in this Met premiere production. Elza van den Heever is "a vocally burnished and emotionally tempestuous" Elizabeth (New York Times). Matthew Polenzani sings Leicester and Maurizio Benini conducts.

Saturday, January 19th, 1 to 4 pm.
Gaetano Donizetti: Maria Stuarda

WRTI will broadcast Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda live from The Metropolitan Opera on January 19th. The performance will also be shown live in hundreds of movie theaters around the world.

In this tale of royal intrigue, set in 16th-century England, the title role of Mary, Queen of Scots is sung by Joyce DiDonato. WRTI’s Jim Cotter spoke with the superstar mezzo-soprano about her latest role, how she constructs her characters, and how her years at Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts were more useful personally and professionally than artistically.

Today, Joyce DiDonato is firmly ensconced on opera’s "A" list. But when she was training at AVA in the 1990s, such a future outcome seemed very unlikely.

DIDONATO: I wasn’t a star singer there and it wasn’t clear that I would go on and have a career, I had to go deep inside myself and ask do I still want to stay with this?

COTTER: So why did stick with it?

DIDONATO: I had to.

After Philadelphia, she had spells in the young artist programs at Santa Fe Opera and Houston Grand Opera where she says it all began to come together for her vocally.

COTTER: The voice started getting free and I started too find my voice, and that needed to happen. And happily it did and I continuously work to find more freedom.

DiDonato believes that in order to fully explore roles she needs to understand what the composer wanted, the historical context of the story and bring her own life experiences to the process of creating a fully fleshed-out character.

DIDONATO: The pain that I’ve gone through, in various ways, it always comes out of nowhere and socks you over the head. Of course I use that. It informs who I am as a human being and therefore it informs who I am as an artist.

Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore returns to the Met in a revival the New York Times calls "rousing, satisfying, truly fun." Verdi’s intense melodrama includes some of the composer’s most memorable music. Patricia Racette is in the role of Leonora, Marco Berti sings Manrico, and Alexey Markov is the Count, with star mezzo Stephanie Blythe as the deadly gypsy Azucena. Saturday, January 12, 1 to 4 pm.

A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the San Francisco Opera Association

Cast:

The Met offers a rare opportunity to hear Hector Berlioz’s vast epic, last performed at the Met in 2003. Deborah Voigt, Susan Graham, Bryan Hymel, and Dwayne Croft lead the starry cast, portraying characters from the Trojan War. Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi marshals the large-scale musical forces. Susan Graham's tones were burnished, her acting impassioned.

The New York Times calls Thomas Adès’s masterpiece “one of the most inspired, audacious and personal operas to have come along in years….and offers a superb cast, headed by the charismatic baritone Simon Keenlyside… Ariel is a dazzling creation and Audrey Luna conquers the role…Adès drew a textured, glittering and suspenseful account of his opera from the great Met orchestra.” The Financial Times lauds the performance’s “rare virtuosity… Keenlyside sang with sensitive force… [and] loomed and brooded magnetically.” The Associated Press praises Adès’s “magical score

The Barber of Seville is a rollicking comedy classic the entire family can enjoy. This holiday entertainment is razor-sharp, stylishly-sung (in English!) and just two hours long. The charming and irresistible cast of young stars includes Isabel Leonard as the lovely Rosina, Alek Shrader as the Count who woos her, and Rodion Pogossov as the conspiring barber. Saturday, December 22, 1 to 3 pm.

CAST:
Conductor: Yves Abel
Rosina: Isabel Leonard
Count Almaviva: Alek Shrader
Figaro: Rodion Pogossov

The Met’s unforgettable production of Verdi’s ancient Egyptian drama stars Liudmyla Monastyrska as the enslaved Ethiopian princess caught in a love triangle with the heroic Radamès, played by Carl Tanner and Roberto Alagna, and the proud Egyptian princess Amneris, sung by Dolora Zajick and Olga Borodina. Fabio Luisi conducts this revival.

A love triangle turns deadly in Verdi's A Masked Ball. Conspirators want the Swedish monarch Gustav III dead — and suspected adultery plays right into their murderous plans. The king is in love with his best friend's wife, and she's in love with him. Desperate to extinguish her ardor, she turns to a sorceress for help, but too late! The secret's out and a devastated husband takes his revenge.

Verdi is at the peak of his musical and dramatic genius as he delves deeply into the psyches of three people who love, yet destroy, each other.

The tragic opera Maria Stuarda, part of Donizetti's “Tudor Trilogy” of operas, reveals the deadly rivalry between two monarchs: Mary, Queen of Scots, and her cousin, Elizabeth I, Queen of England. Elizabeth has imprisoned Mary for treason, but agrees to meet with her at the urging of the Earl of Leicester—Elizabeth's advisor and Mary's lover. Tempers flare, insults are hurled, and Mary's fate is sealed. She contemplates her death with great dignity and virtuosic bel canto singing in the final scene.

A long war between France and Spain winds down with a peace treaty.  A cross-border royal marriage solidifies the deal.  Over the course of the next several hours, Italian composer Guiseppe Verdi tests the limits of a king’s power, the good intentions of a jealous princess, and the loyalty of a dear friend. Underscoring it all, are the righteous fury of the Spanish Inquisition and the unfulfilled love of Spain’s Don Carlo and the virtuous Elizabeth of France, culminating in one puzzling conclusion.