The celebrated
American mezzo-soprano on abandoning her first vocation for ’the dark side’, the genius of Handel – and channelling House of Cards for her latest, ruthless role
Standing alone under the glass-and-iron canopy of the Royal Opera House’s Paul Hamlyn Hall, the American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato is in full dramatic flight: winking, grinning, pouting, flirting, twirling, giggling. It’s a lesson for the photo-phobic: always give your all, even to an inanimate camera lens. The Observer’s photographer makes one last request and it doesn’t sound simple: would she lie down on that sofa over there so he can snap her from the gallery above? Furniture is rearranged. They’ve already had an hour. Inwardly I’m an emoji scream. DiDonato is right there, splayed out Hollywood-starlet style, shoes on, off, hand this way, arm flung back, patience personified. When the shoot is over, she says how much she enjoyed it – an unheard-of response from a madly busy international opera star, just out of a long day’s rehearsal.
As we walk through the ROH’s backstage warren to a private room to talk, she’s instantly in offstage mode, conversational, candid, warm, funny, reflecting on the day’s rehearsal. “The mood was black. I’ve got to shake it off,” she shudders, describing not the working atmosphere but aspects of Handel’s Agrippina (1709), in which she sings the title role in a new production for the Royal Opera by Barrie Kosky. This co-production with Bavarian State Opera, Munich, and Dutch National Opera is conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev in his house debut.