Best of 2019 – Highlights

Riccardo Muti with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, May 2 in Orchestra Hall: There was an air of celebration and relief as Muti and the CSO played their first post-strike concert. The maestro led a radiant performance of a piece the orchestra hadn’t played since Theodore Thomas, its first music director, was at the podium in 1894: Bizet’s “Roma.” Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato was radiant in a lyric scene from Berlioz’s “The Death of Cleopatra”; and the orchestra sounded sumptuous in Respighi’s “Pines of Rome.”

On Dec. 15 at Carnegie Hall, DiDonato delivered an inspired concept for Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise: Normally sung by men, DiDonato portrays the protagonist’s beloved as she reads his journal — each song one of the entries written as he trudges towards self-imposed isolation and death. Having sung Rossini for years, DiDonato gave the music great precision, warmly hugged by Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s rubato-prone pianism. But in the final song — a terrifying hallucination of a broken-down hurdy-gurdy man — the journal book was put away, with DiDonato experiencing it as if seeing the angel of death claiming her beloved. A stroke of genius. It’s available on video replay on Medici TV through March 16.

Berlioz: ‘Autrefois un roi de Thulé’ – “La Damnation de Faust”; Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg; John Nelson, conductor (Erato). After setting a new standard in “Les Troyens” two years ago, Mr. Nelson is back with another immaculate account of a Berlioz masterwork. Two stars have returned as well: Michael Spyres as Faust and Joyce DiDonato as Marguerite, with a touching blend of hope and sad beauty in this lieder-like aria. JOSHUA BARONE

Agrippina at the Royal Opera House, London. Starry Handelian cast led by Joyce DiDonato in Barrie Kosky’s gleaming staging.

Treble contributor Konstantin Rega named Joyce DiDonato’s album Songplay one of the best albums of 2019.

Photo credit: Chris Singer