Joyce DiDonato: “It's a sacred thing”
The TalksMs. DiDonato, what’s the difference between being a singer and being an artist?
There’s a lot of rules in opera. There’s a lot of tradition that is expected. You can sing something by Mozart and something by Puccini, and it demands two very different approaches, so there’s a lot of boxes that you have to check to just be “legitimate” in the opera world, but if you’re only ticking those boxes, it doesn’t come to life in a three-dimensional way. When I first started out as an opera singer, I felt like, “This is what I have to be,” because it’s what’s expected, and that becomes a kind of straight jacket. After you’ve learned all those rules and you can master them, but then you have to really roll up your sleeves, get your hands ready and find your own way in it. That’s, I think, where the artistry comes in. And the really thrilling performances that take my breath away or make time stand still are those artists that are doing all the right things, and then they’re making magic.
How do you achieve that? Is it just letting go of expectations, or something else?
Part of it is that, yes, but it’s really about staying present. So if you think about tennis, for example, and how much coaching, how much training, how much conditioning goes into a Grand Slam tournament… And then you arrive, and none of that matters. You can’t control any of the level of preparation that’s already done, you just have to be present and keep your mind in the game. I just did a recital at La Scala, and there is a lot of preparation for all the notes I sang in four different languages. I have to put in so many hours to do that. But when it comes time and I’m front of the audience, I have to really be so incredibly present. Because otherwise, if I made a mistake or something didn’t go well, my brain goes back there. I’m not communicating in the moment, I’m in the past.
“Singing, especially in the classical world, exists to give life to huge emotion.”
Or if you’re worried how to sing a certain phrase, or how the ending of a piece is going to go…
Then again, I’m not in the present. For me, the stage has been the greatest teacher of my life, because it absolutely demands that you stay present, which means also the self-monitoring has to be put to the side. You have to stay completely present through the text, choosing the color and the emotion that is at hand, so that the emotion can arrive to the audience. It’s like you’re a naked, raw nerve that’s just trying to do something beautiful.
The opera singer Benjamin Bernheim also talked about the emotionality of singing in different colors.
It’s super important. I mean, it’s what the great jazz singers did, right? Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, they can make their voice be sunshine or fog. Singing, especially in the classical world, exists to give life to huge emotion, even slightly exaggerated emotion because it’s theatrical, it’s dramatic. We don’t use microphones, so it’s big. It has to be big to fill an auditorium, and to give life to these emotions. For effusive joy, there’s a brightness that comes into the sound. There’s a steel grey, silver metallic color when you’re threatening, when you’re angry. When you’re hurt, there’s a fog like quality, a sort of air in the sound. One note can be sung with an infinite number of colors because that’s our emotional landscape.
It must be exhausting to physically push your voice and your emotions so far every single night on stage.
It’s about learning how to navigate this tsunami of energy going through you. And I think early on, it was very hard for me because I lived it in such a big way, I didn’t know how to leave it at the theater. I’d come home and it was still brewing in me, and I think that still happens to a certain extent, but I’m much better at giving all of it over. When I leave the stage, I know that that that’s done. It costs a little bit, for sure, it costs something also, because you’re kind of preacher, in a way. I mean, you’ve got 2000 people asking for this kind of an experience, asking to be transported, asking to be carried away. They don’t come just to hear a pretty sound. They come to to have an experience that they’ll never forget, and that hopefully touches them in a way that very few other things can. And so you have to prepare energetically, and then close it, almost like a ritual, and go on with your life.
You once described that as “being in service of the audience.” Are you also in service of the text itself?
Definitely. We are guardians. When you’re singing a piece by Handel or Mozart, you’re a guardian of a great masterpiece. It could be that somebody out there has never heard this before, this masterpiece, and I’m responsible for introducing it to them. And I feel that quite strongly. I know how powerful music can be. You’re a guardian of that experience for people. So I feel like I’m in service to the masterpiece, to the opera, to the composer, to the words. There’s a part of me that also feels connected to all the singers that have sung it over the centuries, like we become part of a club, we all know the hard parts and the rewarding parts. I feel in service to the public that comes to see me sing, because for some people this experience is a kind of lifeline for them, it’s the only thing that makes sense in a complicated world. If you are suffering or in sorrow or grief, the music of Handel knows that deeply, and so you can come and receive it and realize you’re not alone. You are not the only human being in the course of history that knows this, and that is comforting, and that can be a lifeline to people. It’s a very sacred and strange thing.
“There’s some pieces you sing and instead of audiences bursting into applause, they don’t move and they don’t breathe, they don’t want to break the spell of the moment.”
Strange in what way?
Well, two thousand strangers come together and agree to stay quiet and agree to play pretend for a while. I get on stage and sing a piece about a woman in Greece who loses her lover, and I incarnate the world of Camille Claudel. I’m Joyce, but everybody’s going to pretend I’m Camille for the 30 minutes, and we all go through disdain and anger and sorrow and joy. In that moment, the emotion is real. There’s some pieces you sing and instead of audiences bursting into applause, they don’t move and they don’t breathe, they don’t want to break the spell of the moment. And I’m in service of that too, because also in today’s world, I think it’s harder and harder to find those kind of communal experiences where everybody’s in agreement about taking an experience together. I love that, I love doing that.
Has music also helped you navigate your own challenges and tough times?
Oh, how much time do we have? (Laughs) One example that comes to mind was 18 years ago, I was singing in Paris, a Mozart opera called Idomeneo, and I played a young boy, Idamante, who never knew his father, Idomeneo. And Idomeneo makes a pact with Neptune. He’s been at sea and he says, “If you save my life, as a reward, I will sacrifice the first person I see on the shore when I land.” And the first person he sees on the shore is his son, Idamante. They meet and there’s excitement but then he remembers the vow and and Idomeneo casts Idamante up. And there’s an aria that says, “Oh, my father, I’ve only found him to lose him again.” Well, I was singing that about 10 days after my dad’s funeral. My father had passed away, and I went home to the funeral, and then I came back and was in the middle of these performances… I’m still not quite sure how I did it. The curtain came down the first night, and I just burst into tears. But I realized with a little bit of time, that grief and and emotion was moving through me, even though I wasn’t at all ready to process it or comprehend it.
It goes back to what you said about music having the power to unblock something.
Right, and I’ve learned to allow it to unblock me, I’ve learned to kind of trust it and to give over to it because many times, the Mozarts or Strausses or Mahlers of this world, their music knows better than me how to process these things. And it ends up being an incredible gift.