It’s hard to imagine Joyce DiDonato’s vocal artistry getting any better: The world-renowned mezzo-soprano from Prairie Village stands at her absolute prime. Her Harriman-Jewell Recital on February 13th—which happened to be her 42nd birthday—demonstrated the full range of her capabilities, offering a generous array of arias, scenes and French and Italian songs. Her mezzo is gorgeously outfitted: plumy and dense, relaxingly natural, dramatically informed and with a thrilling power in all its ranges.
Each half of her intelligently organized recital, a sort of Valentine’s Day gift to the community, began with a scena. The opening was Haydn’s “Scena di Berenice,” which she sang with full operatic drama and fire, exploiting every nuance, every stormy outburst, to quite spectacular effect. The second opened with the “Willow Song” (“Assisa appiè d’salice”) from Rossini’s Otello, in which she was able to show her peerless connection with this composer’s particular style, lending Desdemona’s demure lament a tender sadness and embellishing the bel canto lines with shrewd taste.
Along the way were four rather slight Rossini songs, sung with subtlety if perhaps a tad too many saucy gestures, five jaunty songs evocative of Venetian gondolas and whatnot (Reynaldo Hahn’s Veneziana) and three Italian songs including the lovely, pensive “Serenata Francese” of Leoncavallo. Most rewarding, for me, were three terrific songs by Cécile Chaminade, one of the few female composers to have made a mark on the first half of the 20th century. Joyce’s impeccable French diction came to the fore in these substantial pieces, which ranged from the tranquil (“Aubade”) to the fiercely joyous (“L’été”). Throughout the recital Joyce showed she understands the difference between opera and song, approaching the former with full-scaled dramatic gesture, the latter with a more scaled-down but still emotionally rich delivery.
David Zobel was the supportive, always demure pianist. The encores were Cherubini’s aria “Voi che sapete” from The Marriage of Figaro, sung like an ardent boy; the splendidly splashy “Tanti affetti” from Rossini’s La donna del Lago; and “Over the Rainbow,” the latter a tribute to the land of Joyce’s youth.
To reach Paul Horsley, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.
