For multiple Grammy Award-winning opera star Joyce DiDonato, the impacts her performances have outside the concert hall have become as important as the pleasure the audience feels inside. The 55-year-old American mezzo-soprano has had an extraordinary career, singing at all the world’s top opera houses, and has released highly rated, genre-defying albums such as 2019’s that blends opera with jazz. Since 2015, following the terrorist attacks in Paris, her shows have increasingly included social and political messages about such topics as prison reform, conflict and the global refugee crisis.
Her latest show, Eden, which comes to Hong Kong on June 3, is an attempt to bring the audience closer to nature at a time when humans’ relationship with the planet has reached crisis point. Speaking to the Post ahead of the performance, in which she will be accompanied by regular collaborators the ensemble il Pomo d’Oro, DiDonato says the aim of the show is to project nature as a perfectly balanced mystery, one to which humans are integral. Eden is a fusion of music, theatre and movement, in which DiDonato juxtaposes works from four centuries – the 14 pieces featured are from composers born between 1594 and 1960.
Among them are 17th century composer Biagio Marini, Christoph Willibald Gluck from the 18th century, Gustav Mahler from the 19th century, and Oscar-winning 20th century composer Rachel Portman. “It felt quite daring at the beginning because it seemed we were breaking s.
