Mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato is an international opera superstar, and she’s originally from Prairie Village.
On February 14, the Grammy Award-winning artist will return to KC for the hometown premiere of her latest endeavor, song cycle Emily — No Prisoner Be. A collaboration between DiDonato, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts and string trio Time for Three, the genre-defying theatrical work sets two dozen Emily Dickinson poems to music. DiDonato’s Folly Theater performance follows a leading role with the Metropolitan Opera in Amahl and the Night Visitors and comes just days before the song cycle’s Carnegie Hall premiere.
Kansas City magazine spoke with the singer about her musical upbringing, her hometown favorites and Dickinson’s work.
I hear you come from a musical family. Your dad was the church choir director at St. Ann Catholic Church in Prairie Village, so it sounds like music has always been a fundamental part of your life. Tell me a bit about your artistic beginnings. I feel like music was my first language, and in a household with seven children, it might be where I learned to project. We had so many genres blasting through our house, from my sisters practicing Chopin and Gershwin on the piano to my dad’s Glenn Miller records and my older brother’s AC/DC and Pink Floyd albums blaring from the basement. For me, choir was home, and at Bishop Miege, I was really blessed with an incredible choral teacher, Karl Wolf, who was absolutely fundamental towards crafting my love of music and singing.
You’re gearing up to tour Emily — No Prisoner Be, a collaboration between you, Kevin Puts and Time for Three (Nicolas Kendall, Ranaan Meyer and Charles Yang). How did this song cycle come to be? I was singing Virginia Woolf in Kevin’s opera The Hours, and he approached me with the beautiful message that he wanted to write more music for me. He then asked if I knew Time for Three, and at that point I had only heard their name—I knew they had recently won a Grammy with Kevin’s concerto, but that was all I knew. Kevin said, “I just think you guys will really hit it off.” He must be a fortune-teller. The very next statement was: “And I’m thinking about Emily Dickinson. I just found this poem, ‘They shut me up in Prose’ and I can already hear the music.” Before I knew it, we were in a studio workshopping his music and our project was taking flight. Kevin has such a clear and inventive way of composing and at the same time is indescribably collaborative—so I didn’t even hesitate for one moment to say yes. I feel that he has reimagined what a song cycle can be for the 21st century. I cannot wait for Kansas City to experience it.
Tell me about the impact Dickinson’s work has had on you. As a senior at Wichita State University, I programmed Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson by Aaron Copland on my senior recital and chose the same pieces for my first solo recital album. She has always been a kind of first choice for me. Her words call out for music, which may explain why she is the poet who is most often set to music. I think nearly 3,000 songs have been inspired by her poetry. She is raw, bewildering, inspiring, human and true. It makes singing her words touch the real humanity in all of us.
Do you happen to have a favorite poem out of the two dozen in this song cycle? This is no exaggeration, but I live for every single word in this collection. As one ends and the next one starts, I literally think, “Oh, this one!” I also—like [Franz] Schubert’s Winterreise—can no longer imagine removing a single piece from this. It forms a perfect whole.
What’s it like to perform for your hometown? It is imperative for me to bring my projects home. I love returning here, bringing back home all the things I develop around the world and sharing the musicians I am lucky enough to partner with—many times giving them their KC debuts. I truly can’t imagine missing a single season without KC at the heart of my season.
What are some of your must-haves when you’re back in KC? Time with my loved ones, Minsky’s Pizza and a Royals game.
What’s an album that you’ve been inspired by lately? I think Rosalia’s latest album, [Lux], is something really inspired and daring. Of course, we in the classical world always sing in many languages and without autotune or looping, but for the pop world, to have a superstar make such a concerted effort to come back to the core of music has been sensational.
