VIVA DIVA! Starring Joyce DiDonato

ANTICIPATING JOYCE’S PERFORMANCE OF BERLIOZ’S LA MORT DE CLÉOPÂTRE

La Mort de Cléopâtre (excerpt): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coPDeshM-ik

Here’s a brief portion of a live performance of this glorious piece that will demonstrate Joyce’s remarkable affinity for the great Queen of Egypt and Berlioz’s dramatic style.

La Mort de Cléopâtre (complete): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1FZF6WolM0

This is a legendary performance by one of Joyce’s favorite artists, the great Dame Janet Baker.

To hear Joyce in other works of Berlioz:

Song cycle: Les Nuits d’Été:

Arguably the most ravishingly beautiful orchestral song cycle ever composed, and ideal for a high mezzo-soprano. All Berlioz fans will thrill to Joyce’s singing in this live performance.

Act V, sc. ii of Les Troyens (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kdGrNmkIeM

Les Troyens, complete opera on CD (Erato label)

Joyce is simply stupendous as Didon, as captured in performance at the Vienna State Opera in 2018. This portrayal is one of the greatest achievements of her career and is not to be missed!

La Damnation de Faust (complete opera on CD, Erato label)

Another sublime portrayal, this time the hapless Marguerite, a role that draws on all of Joyce’s extraordinary musicality and her profound gift for the French language.

At Your Bookshop or Library

Berlioz:  Vol. 1 – The Making of an Artist, and Vol. 2 – Servitude and Greatness (University of California Press)

There will surely never be a biography of Berlioz to surpass this one in its authoritative command of every aspect of this master composer’s life and music.

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff  (Back Bay Books)

This 2011 biography is a stunning achievement by its author, previously winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the best biography of 2002. If you’re curious about the life of Cleopatra, one of history’s most extraordinary women, this book is essential.

 

ANTICIPATING JOYCE’S PERFORMANCE OF JAKE HEGGIE’S CAMILLE CLAUDEL: INTO THE FIRE

Camille Claudel: Into the Fire (complete performance):

Jake Heggie and Joyce DiDonato have enjoyed a highly fruitful artistic collaboration, highlighted by the premiere of Jake’s opera Great Scott at The Dallas Opera and this riveting song cycle, which Joyce performs here with the Alexander String Quartet.

 On DVD

Camille Claudel (World Films)

This 1989 drama stars an incendiary pair of French actors: Gérard Depardieu as the sculptor Auguste Rodin and the incandescent Isabelle Adjani in the film’s title role. Camille is his sometime model, assistant, and mistress, whose longing to fulfill herself as a sculptor in her own right leads to Rodin’s growing resentment and her own emotional disintegration.

In your bookshop or library:

Camille Claudel: A Life by Odile Ayral-Clause (Harry N. Abrams, publ.)

This is the definitive work on Camille Claudel, a genuinely tragic figure whose life was consumed by delusion and disappointment. The book will also create a full picture of artistic life in late-19^th-century Paris, and of course, will bring into focus the art and personality of Claudel’s lover, Rodin, one of the giants in the history of sculpture.

 

IN ANTICIPATION OF BEETHOVEN’S CORIOLAN OVERTURE

Coriolan Overture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHXSsE2ZPg

This magisterial 1807 work is given a memorable performance by one of the eminent Beethoven interpreters of our time, the late Carlos Kleiber, conducting the Bavarian State Orchestra in 1996.

In your bookshop or library:

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, publ.)

Although pretty massive in scale (more than 1,000 pages), this 2014 biography reads superbly. If you’re looking for a single book on this towering figure in the history of music, run, do not walk, and track this book down.