Joyce DiDonato and David Zobel: A Journey Through Venice
Live at Carnegie Hall
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Cast
Joyce DiDonato — Mezzo-soprano
David Zobel — Pianist
Program notes
Live from Carnegie Hall, Joyce DiDonato leads a musical tour of Venice with songs and arias that span the Baroque to the 20th century.
Since the 17th century, Venice has been a source of inspiration for artists, and especially for composers. Its canals, its gondolas, its lagoon, its palaces, its carnival… all those exotic elements paint an idyllic picture of the city. Joyce DiDonato gathers works linked to the City of the Doges in this program.
Joyce DiDonato is without any doubt one of the star singers of the current lyrical scene. She won Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition in 1998, was highly praised in 2000 and has shone in the greatest opera halls, from Paris to New York. A Rossini expert, whose works she sings during recitals at Carnegie Hall, she is also a great interpreter of Bach, Handel and Mozart. In this recital, broadcast live from Carnegie Hall on medici.tv, Joyce DiDonato is accompanied by her friend and colleague David Zobel, with whom she sang in the most prestigious concert halls and recorded the disc The Deepest Desire.
Joyce DiDonato sings two extracts of Vivaldi’s opera Ercole su'l Termodonte (a rare opera that was thought to be lost until recently). Ercole su'l Termodonte was created in Rome where the pontifical law forbade women to perform on stage. The female roles were thus originally written for the soprano castratos. We will also hear Rossini’s La regata veneziana as well as Desdemona’s aria, "Assisa al piè d'un salice," an extract from Otello, an opera inspired by Shakespeare. Given that the action in Otello takes place in Venice, the work is without a doubt the most emblematic literary myth of the Serenissima. A hundred and fifty years later, in 1974, Michael Head also wrote a book of arias on the theme of Venice. Three Songs of Venice, dedicated to Dame Janet Baker, celebrate "a city more beautiful than any other." At the end of the recital, Joyce DiDonato will perform five arias from the cycle Venezia, composed by Reynaldo Hahn in 1901 on texts in a Venetian dialect.
medici.tv wants to thank Eren Group for their support of this webcast.
Joyce DiDonato appears courtesy of Erato / Warner Classics.
Discover also Joyce DiDonato's latest album, Stella di Napoli, released on the Erato label:
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