Joyce DiDonato and teen opera fan Harry Rose talk about Opera Rocks! Listen

Norman Lebrecht meets the acclaimed American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. Listen The sixth child of an Irish Catholic family in Prairie Village, Kansas, she married young and was almost thirty before anyone was prepared to back her talent. In the decade since then, she has taken on mezzo roles in Rossini and Handel with a wide-eyed zest that audiences find irresistible, and an {…}

The American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato released a dazzling CD of Handel arias earlier this year. Listen Called Furore, it’s a collection of set-pieces from operas and oratorios where Handel’s characters experience flights of passion — fury, sadness, jealousy, euphoria. Fresh Air’s classical music critic has a review of the disc. – by Lloyd Schwartz Listen to “Furore’: Handel, Causing Quite A Fuss”.

Joyce released her (FURORE) CD in January. Listen “I have learned more artistically, and even as a human being, I’ve learned more from performing Handel’s music, probably more than any other composer,” DiDonato says. Her new recording focuses on arias from operas and oratorios where Handel’s characters experience flights of fury and tragedy. “As advanced as we like to think we are, {…}

If the economy has you upset, consider the fate of Handel heroines. On a new CD, American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato presents 14 mad scenes – angry arias by temperamental and vindictive heroines. DiDonato joins us to share those with us, and talk about her busy career, which took off after winning the Metropolitan Opera’s Beverly Sills Award.

Joyce joins Jane Garvey to discuss what new audiences can bring to opera, why she is glad not to have met Leonard Bernstein, and her love of Handel’s female characters. Listen Joyce DiDonato has just opened the season at the Wigmore Hall, she’s also playing Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House, and has an album out of Handel’s ‘mad {…}

A spirited conversation with the ever-colorful JOHN COPLEY, one of the world’s premiere theatrical figures and revered opera directors with an stage history going back decades, Joyce and John took time out from working on “The Barber of Seville” to trade lively stories. (Actually, all the stories are John’s!) Podcast with John Copley

In this BACKSTAGE AT LYRIC podcast from the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the dynamic and brilliant Roger Pines leads the discussion with Joyce about her debut with this company in her signature role of Rosina. (Courtesy of the Lyric Opera of Chicago) Listen to Podcast | Backstage at Lyric on iTunes