Joyce DiDonato interview: ‘I was a thriving member of a super-patriarchal system’

Joyce DiDonato has had a quiet 12 months, particularly by her standards. In fact, she struggles to find the language to describe it. “What’s the word?” the 52-year-old superstar mezzo says, puzzled for a second. “A sabbatical!” It’s no surprise that DiDonato struggles with the term. Her life for the past few decades has been one relentless march across the globe – in part because of the opera world’s (former) international churn, but also because she has the energy to match. When not impressing us with her Rosina, her Agrippina or her Maria Stuarda, she has been a formidable ambassador off-stage, whether it’s via her much-loved masterclasses for students, or her chirpy, engaged tweeting.

“The truth is, I did it for 21 years at a pretty intensive level,” she sighs down the phone, from the home she shares with her partner of a few years, a ballet dancer, in the countryside beyond Barcelona. “I mean – not Plácido Domingo intense, but pretty intense, you know?” But in the past year, she has learnt to appreciate the smaller things. “I’ve now witnessed 12 full moons pass over us in the same place, and that’s new for me, in my adult life.”

The last time would have been back in Kansas, when she was simply Joyce Flaherty, the sixth of seven children of an Irish-Catholic architect (the DiDonato comes courtesy of the first of her two ex-husbands). “And I guarantee you, at that age I was not paying attention!”

DiDonato is the type of star we want in this crisis – a woman whose most dramatic, tragic roles still can’t cancel out an innate warmth, or what they now call “relatability”. Which makes it all the more surprising that she’s making a comeback of sorts with a recording of Schubert’s decidedly bleak Winterreise. Is this suite of baleful songs, bemoaning the sorrows of love and created as the composer headed to a syphilitic death aged 31, what we need to hear right now?

“There comes a point where I have to walk away, because I think it’s too on point, and it’s too raw,” she agrees. “And I think: ‘Oh my God, that’s the last thing in the world I want to experience coming out of confinement!’ And on the other” – and trust her to find an upswing – “I believe it’s also incredibly cathartic.”

Female singers have tried the cycle before – in fact, there’s an illustrious list of them, including her friend and colleague Alice Coote. Something kept bothering DiDonato, though. “It’s very egocentric, right? It’s all this one man’s obsession.” Finally, sitting one last time at the piano, she had an epiphany. “I just thought: what about her? That poor girl – what about her?” DiDonato’s conceit is to ditch the idea that she is singing as the man; instead, her interpretation that it’s his beloved rereading (and singing) his words after his death.

She promises that this isn’t just another clever “gender-swap”, though, of the kind that’s so popular these days. “I wasn’t struggling to enter it as a male or female, because half of my operatic career I’ve been in pants” – trousers, of course – “and I enjoy it very much!” Still, trouser roles are one thing; on the day we speak, she has been tweeting her desire to see more female composers. Is the classical world finally crawling towards parity?

“I do see change,” she says, before admitting she wasn’t the most ardent feminist. “It wasn’t ever something that I personally engaged in, which perhaps I feel badly about… I wasn’t sitting here going, ‘Where are the female composers?’ I was a thriving member of a super-patriarchal system.”

Now, however, the industry is at the front of her mind. “In many ways, it has been decimated… I mean, the top halls in the world, even during the Second World War, never shut down – for a week, let alone for over a year!” In fact, she says, “what worries me is how much of a precedent this sets. I’m not super-comfortable with how easily everything shut down… I’m not saying it was right or wrong,” she adds, “but I know we have a newly trained society. Can this be shut down so easily and quickly again in the future?”

When normal-ish life resumes, does she think the pace will pick up as before? “Sincerely, I really don’t know. I’m sort of preparing myself for any eventuality. By this time next year, I think we will be approaching normal.” In her case, though, she is happy to have slowed down a bit. “Before, I was just chasing… and there’s a part of me that loves that, and I thrived on that for a long time. But I also think it was a microcosm for the world – and I just don’t think that pace is sustainable. At some point, you start to sacrifice quality.”

Right around now, DiDonato should have been starring in the Met’s first production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, as the nun Helen Prejean, who begins to visit a convicted murderer on Death Row, desperately trying to save his soul. It’s a role close to her heart, and I wonder aloud if that isn’t to do with her coming from a devout Irish Catholic background. Does she still have that faith?

“Woo!” she exhales loudly. “I thought we were just gonna talk about death!” (Sorry, Joyce: Winterreise was only the amuse-bouche.) “9/11 is the thing that threw me for a loop,” she says. “It took me a while to come around. I was just thinking: people are doing this in the name of their God? And that sent me on a long spiral of questioning.” She invokes a God in whom she clearly doesn’t really believe any more, perhaps a bit anxious of offending anyone back home, or indeed anywhere else. Eventually she reaches a conclusion. “I still feel very, very spiritual, and I nurture that part of me every chance that I can get.”

This much is clear from lockdown. She has been exercising her voice, but also resting it; doing yoga and tending to her garden; and, in the evening, cultivating her mind. “We’re watching a lot of RuPaul’s Drag Race,” she announces. Is there, I wonder aloud, sometimes a rapport between a drag queen and an opera diva? “Do you think?”, she says delightedly. “Oh darling, darling – 100 per cent!” 

I’m glad she’s enjoying yoga and Schubert, but it’ll be great to get the classic DiDonato back, too.     

Winterreise is out on April 23 on Erato