Joyce DiDonato, one of the most renowned modern day opera singers, is returning to Houston for a one-night-only performance in the Wortham Theater Center’s Cullen Theater courtesy of Da Camera of Houston on Tuesday night.
The mezzo-soprano, internationally known for her roles in operas by Donizetti, Mozart, Handel and Rossini – and also famously for continuing her performance in a wheelchair after breaking her leg when she slipped and fractured it during a 2009 Royal Opera House in London production of The Barber of Seville – is here to sing a new 24-part song cycle.
Composed by Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Puts, Emily – No Prisoner Be uses the poetry of Emily Dickinson in song to both showcase her work and tell the story of the famous gifted recluse. The award-winning string trio Time for Three which collaborated in the creation of what has been described as a “genre-defying production” is also part of the program.
“I don’t really have a word for what ’this’ is,” she said. “It’s not a standard song recital. It’s not a concert. It’s not an opera. But it’s a staged theatrical experience. There’s lighting and there’s atmosphere and there’s a desk and some setting that I think allows the to enter this world, but it’s not a full-fledged opera.”
“Kevin brought this to me without a commission,” DiDonato said. “He just needed to write this.” It was recorded two years ago and they have done 20 concerts. It’s about 70 minutes long and it’s done without an intermission.
“I loved Kevin’s music, I loved his idea about this, I loved the poetry of Emily and it just felt like kismet,” DiDonato said. “He had this idea to put me together with the group Time for Three who I did not know. The moment the five of us met in a room and looked at Kevin’s music from literally the first minute it was just electric in the best way.”
Describing Time for Three, DiDonato said: “They are a string trio. They’re playing their instruments, it’s violin and double bass and one of the violinists also plays the viola. They also sing. So Kevin wrote this piece for the four of us and it’s unlike anything that exits. The four of us perform side by side. I’m in the world of Emily Dickinson and there’s kind of muses and the provocateurs and the commentators and the Greek chorus at times. They fill a lot of different roles.
Asked why she things the public is still interested in Emily Dickinson, DiDonato said: “She’s an extremely complicated, fascinating woman. She was living at time of the Civil War. She was a Calvinist in Massachusetts. So quite conservative. Her life was mapped out for her as a woman at that time. But yet she was born with this tsunami of creative passion and energy. The world was telling her how to be, how to act, what to believe, what to do, what to say and what not to say. And inside she was exploding with ideas and questions. And at the same time watching a lot of death around her, a lot of division in her world. So she in her early 20s she started secluding herself in her bedroom. And within a few years she rarely if ever left.
“She published 10 poems in her lifetime and all of those were edited by her male publishers. At the time women were not allowed to write about death or God and faith. And that was things that were on her mind and heavy in her heart. On her death, after she died, her maid found almost 2,000 poems that were wrapped at the foot of her bed. And these poems set a new trajectory of writing poetry. American poetry was forever altered after that.
“She wrote about everything — about God, about death, about passion, about questioning, about mental distress, about bumblebees, about flowers, about infinity. I read her words now and it’s astonishing how modern they feel. The way she confronts a world that doesn’t make sense to her.
“There’s a lot of folklore, a lot of mystery about her. She was writing at a time when she knew she would not be published. So she wasn’t writing to be liked. She was free to be extremely vulnerable and raw. There’s a level of truth that comes through in her writing that is very hard to find today. “
“My connection to new works began in Houston. I was in the Houston Opera Studio from ’96 to ’98. 96-98 Thirty years ago. “And David Gockley [former HGO Artistic Director] and we did a new world premiere every year that I was there. It was my first exposure to new music and I didn’t love it at the beginning. I didn’t love the experience of it. I didn’t understand it very well.
“And now, new works have been a staple of mine throughout by career alongside Handel and Rossini. I do think I gained a trust with the audience. I earned that I’m not going to participate in anything that is unbearable.”
“I love the responsibility of taking the audience on a deep journey,” she said. “I have never been more proud to put anything in front of an audience than this.
“We were just in Europe in Italy and Germany and Austria and Montenegro and Finland. And these are audiences who in general don’t have much connection to American poetry, even American modern music so much, let alone Emily Dickinson. And the audiences were on their feet, wiping tears from their eyes because the experience of this is so powerful.”
Joyce DiDonato will perform Emily – No Prisoner Be at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, October 13 along with the award-winning string trio Time for Three at the Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For more information, call 713-524-5050 or visit boxoffice@dacamera.com. $56-$91.
