Interview: Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano

Published on Thursday 5 August 2010 16:53

Pop stars, soap stars, Big Brother contestants - it seems that anyone can now be a diva as long as they behave badly enough, wear high enough heels or can warble through, auto-tuner and amplification-assisted, of course, a clutch of crossover classics. But it wasn't always like this.

Before being in a relationship with Gethin Jones was enough to earn you access to the "d-word", membership of that exclusive club depended not only on acting like a goddess, but sounding like one too. True opera greats - Maria Callas, Leontyne Price, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf - were remote, grand, impossibly glamorous and certainly not just one of the gals. Soaring vocal skills and awe-inspiring technique were one part of the package, tantrums and hissy fits, or choosing seven of your own records as your Desert Island Discs (as Schwarzkopf did) made up the rest. Their voices may have been sweet but they were not. More than a little attitude has always been part of being a diva.

Take Francesca Cuzzoni (1698-1770), the woman for whom Handel composed the continuo aria Falsa Imagine. Far from bowled over by the gesture, she refused to sing it complaining that it was too "simple" and during the subsequent altercation was lifted bodily by the composer who threatened to throw her out of the window. Or Dame Nellie Melba who while singing Mimi in Puccini's La boheme upstaged her fellow cast member, Fritzi Scheff, who was singing Musetta, by holding her note longer and louder than was written in the score. When Scheff left the stage in tears and refused to complete the performance, Melba entertained the audience by singing the mad scene from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. Or perhaps Leontyne Price, the first African American to sing multiple leading roles at the Met in New York. When she came out of retirement from singing dramatic roles in 1981 to perform Aida as a late stand-in, it was reported she insisted on being paid $1 more than the tenor, Luciano Pavarotti, making her, for that moment, the highest paid opera star in the world.

But times have changed. Remote and icy glamour doesn't fit nearly as neatly in a world of reality TV and gossip magazines that publish close-ups of wardrobe malfunctions and every, gory detail of break-ups and break-downs.

Blogs and Twitter feeds make celebrities accessible and the realities of the pressure of working in the public eye, where appearance has become increasingly important and ever more scrutinized, mean that even in the hallowed world of opera, the barriers are coming down.

The American soprano, Renee Fleming, one of the world's most celebrated operatic voices, has been bestowed with the affectionate title "the people's diva". Her recently released CD, Dark Hope, is a collection of songs including a track written by Death Cab for Cutie and another by Tears for Fears. At President Obama's inauguration she sang Rodgers and Hammerstein's crowd-pleasing You'll Never Walk Alone. Being a diva no longer means being aloof, even if it still means, at least in its truest sense, having a mesmerizing voice. Joyce DiDonato, the American mezzo-soprano, is another singer credited with the common touch as well as a glorious vocal talent. DiDonato has performed in the world's finest opera houses and concert halls and received ecstatic critical praise, not least for being a trooper in her performance in Rossini's The Barber of Seville at Covent Garden last year during which she broke her leg in a fall from the stage and then, believing it was only sprained, continued to sing, finishing the run by singing from a wheelchair.

DiDonato is a perfect example of a new generation of opera singers whose talent and commitment to their art is unquestionable, but who also manage to shake free from tradition, whether that is by writing a blog (named cheekily in DiDonato's case yankeediva.blogspot.com) or by mixing more established repertoire with contemporary works - DiDonato won praise in the role of Sister Helen Prejean in Jake Heggie's opera of Dead Man Walking, which she'll perform again next year in Houston). She might be celebrated as one of the finest interpreters of Rossini, but a quick glance through her biography reveals that initially it was for Broadway or a career as a teacher that she was aiming, until at the age of 19 she discovered opera.

It all means that standing at the stage door of Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where I'm to meet DiDonato before the evening's performance of Il Barbiere de Seville, I'm not entirely sure what to expect. I don't have to wait long to find out. Arriving conspicuously on time, DiDonato is alone, no chauffeur, no assistants, no one to fetch soya lattes or carry her Blackberry. She is quietly spoken and friendly. And she's wearing jeans.

Her dressing room doesn't hold any diva-ish touches either. There are no bouquets of flowers, no bottles of champagne chilling in ice buckets. The only furniture is a stool where DiDonato perches and a small, hard sofa which is mine. The sole luxury is air-conditioning to keep out the sweltering heat.

DiDonato may garner ecstatic reviews for her voice, but it's also her persona, the sense that she's down to earth and just like the rest of us that has won her many fans. Partly this is down to her blog, updated remarkably regularly, where she shares backstage chit-chat, photographs that she's taken and, of course, gives an unmediated glimpse into the life of an international opera singer, a life that's a lot less glamorous than many might imagine.

Ask DiDonato how many days she spent at home in Kansas City last year and she can tell you exactly: 32.

"But it was not consecutive," she adds. "It was two days here, four days there. I think six days was the maximum that I spent in one block."

Life on the road, travelling from city to city, often across continents, is, she admits, challenging. It's something that she's had to get used to.

"I have to work at it. I have to consciously set my mind on this kind of lifestyle. I've learned how to handle it better over the years, I was not very successful at it in the beginning. In those years all I could see, or focus on, was what I was missing out on. I was away from home on birthdays and just felt like I was missing things. I've forcefully changed what I focus on and instead of thinking about what I don't have, or where I'm not, I really try to focus on where I am.

"I still get homesick and if my husband (conductor Leonardo Vordoni] and I are apart that's never easy, but we find a way to make sure that we're still thriving."

For Canadian soprano Erin Wall, at an earlier stage of her career than DiDonato, life on the road is a challenge, not least because she gave birth to a baby boy less than ten months ago. "People have this idea that it's very little work and lots of flying around first-class and drinking champagne. It's not that at all," says Wall, on a crackling line from Santa Fe, New Mexico where she's performing in Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman. "Occasionally you get a day or two like that, but as a job it definitely tends to fall more into the gruelling, travelling work category."

After serving her time as an apprentice artist in Chicago, Wall became a professional singer in 2004. It was not, she says, a lifestyle that she was prepared for.

"I saw other people living this life, principal artists coming to Chicago, but that first year was still a shock. There was an adjustment period of learning how to be on the road, learning how to travel and still manage the details of daily life as well, which is part of the trick. You need people to water your plants, feed your cats, pick up your mail. People often don't realise, especially when you're young and single, is that it can be very lonely. You're on your own a lot."

Now married, Wall's husband is the artistic administrator for the Canadian Opera Company, and with a baby son who travels with her, Wall is no longer lonely, but she's honest that it's tricky balancing childcare with an international career.

"It's hard work but it's going really well," she says. "He does like to get up very early but I've gotten used to it. It's a wonderful profession to be in with children because being able to bring him with me I do get to spend a lot of time with him. Maybe more than I would if I went away for eight hours a day to an office."

Wall and DiDonato may typify a new generation of singers, balancing home lives and hobbies with international careers, relying on the close-knit opera community for support and friendship on long trips away from home, but mention the d-word and there's an instant recognition.

"I'm a mezzo-soprano," DiDonato laughs, "so the whole diva thing… I'm not the kind of performer who puts on a persona off-stage as well and the days of arriving with steamer trunks and hat boxes are over. There are, thank goodness, still people in this field who play that role, but I like to have a balance.

"I tried acting more, you know, whatever you call that - posh? I love to dress up, but the rest of it just doesn't sit well with me. I'm a bit more casual than that. I find that it works because what people tend to respond to with me is an openness, just my personality. I am sure there are ladies in fur coats who look down on me every now and again and that's fine."

If anyone is looking down on DiDonato then they plainly aren't listening to her voice. She's already won myriad awards and in recent weeks she's picked up the Echo Klassik Award for Female Singer of the Year and been shortlisted for the Gramophone Artist of the Year Award. Her calendar is booked up for years in advance and amongst other works being created for her, she has a song cycle being written for her to be performed at Carnegie Hall.

"I arrive at La Scala wearing jeans," she says, "it's probably sacrilegious, but I am who I am. I don't want to have to work that hard off-stage."

Wall accepts that people still expect what she calls "diva presence" from opera singers, but she finds the focus on appearance can be difficult to cope with.

"It's definitely something that I feel as a pressure," she says. "It's sometimes spoken and it's sometimes unspoken, but it's definitely something that's always there."

It's been five years since the soprano Deborah Voigt was dropped for a Royal Opera House performance for being, she claimed, too big for her costume, but the issue of size still weighs heavily, at least on women singers. Wall recalls going for a job early on in her career where the emphasis on how she looked was far from subtle. It was made clear, she says, that "weight should be lost". Managers, Wall says, try to put criticism as kindly as possible, but singers are given feedback on their looks and their size and it can be tough to take.

"I enjoy the dressing up part most of the time," she says. "There's a heightened expectation but that's just part of the business. We did sign on for it so, you know, it's not anything that we didn't expect. But it definitely lurks in the back of my mind as a pressure."

For DiDonato the trick is remaining aware of her priorities, the real reason that she sings.

"One of the things I love about opera is that it's the combination of all the art forms and certainly the world of fashion is a big deal in it. I've had the immense pleasure of working with designers. Vivienne Westwood has made a dress for me. It's incredible, it's so exciting. I don't shy away from that aspect at all but it's not how I want to be known at the end of the day. I want people to know me for my singing. I've never been searching for a label of being a fashion plate or a top model. That's a thing that's very short-lived and it's dealing with a superficial level of this which doesn't really appeal to me.

"For me when I went into this career I had a fear of it being narcissistic, glamorous, self-aggrandising and (my blog] is part of what I do to supplement it, to make it feel less self-absorbed. I'm blogging about myself, about what I'm doing, but I try to make the entries more universal and give people an insight into what it is that we do.

"I know that every time I step on the stage it's a real gift so I try not to take it for granted and I try to make it an experience that the public can really participate in. I'm not interested in showing off and them saying 'wow she's so good'. I'm interested in them being moved by an experience. That's what interests me."

Joyce DiDonato will be In Conversation at The Hub on 18 August at 5pm (sold out), she will perform in Idomeneo on 20 August and in recital on 22 August. Erin Wall will perform in Mahler's 8th Symphony with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Donald Runnicles on 4 Sept. For tickets and information visit www.eif.co.uk or tel: [phone]

&#149 This article was first published in The Scotsman, Saturday August 14, 2010