Met Stars: Joyce DiDonato

In mid-March 2020, as the Met made the difficult decision to cancel performances due to the escalating COVID-19 pandemic, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato was in the opera house rehearsing for an eagerly anticipated revival of Massenet’s Werther. Within days, she and co-star Piotr Beczała took to an impromptu livestream to perform excerpts from the opera. It would be many opera lovers’ first taste of the kind of virtual programing that became more and more common in the ensuing months. The Met launched its own live online performance series, Met Stars Live in Concert, later in the year, presenting some of opera’s most extraordinary artists in concerts from around the globe. DiDonato joined the series in September 2020, accompanied by pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson and longtime collaborators, Baroque ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro, from a truly remarkable venue: a former German industrial pavilion now used for theatrical events. Entitled “I Dream A World,” the concert spanned nearly four centuries of music—from Monteverdi and Handel to Mozart, Berlioz, and even a premiere by Kenyatta Hughes—and offered a message of hope and consolation to a world in crisis.