Il Barbiere di Siviglia, The Los Angeles Opera
Still, it was Joyce DiDonato, in her company debut, who dominated. The American mezzo-soprano has, in the past few years, won over the Rossini crowd in most of the world’s opera capitals, and on Sunday she stole a show that was hard to steal. Hers is a full, rich, hall-filling sound, yet her roulades rolled off her tongue with unbelievable ease.
She is a natural actress as well, and she even handled Sagi’s cutesy leg-kicking business with flair, while retaining her dignity.
– Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, November, 2009
Photo: Los Angeles Times
But the musical highlight of the show is mezzo Joyce DiDonato, who has been attacking the part of Rosina with happy gusto in opera houses around the globe (so energetically, in fact, that she fractured a fibula onstage at Covent Garden this summer). DiDonato has a big but exceptionally agile voice, confident and clean throughout the range. Her opening “Una voce poco fa” was brilliant, committed and rapturously received.
– LA Downtown News, December, 2009
DiDonato, as Rosina, is no less dazzling (she first appears, appropriately enough, on a pedestal), lightning fast and pearly of tone, her phrases unwinding in waterfalls of cream.
– Orange County Register, December, 2009
Making her Los Angeles Opera debut, golden-toned mezzo Joyce – “I was born in Kansas just like Dorothy” – DiDonato matched Flórez note for note, and made Rosina, who can be too much of a virginal babe, into something delectable, made of flesh and blood. In less than a decade, she has become one of the most sought after singers by the leading opera houses in roles ranging from A (Alcina) to Z (Zlatohrbitek, in Janacek’s ‘Cunning Little Vixen’). In addition to her astonishing singing, she has a command of languages that even has the French press singing her praises for her idiomatic French.
– Seen and Heard International, December, 2009