Joyce DiDonato

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Joyce DiDonato, born Joyce Flaherty on February 13, 1969, in Prairie Village, Kansas, is an American opera singer and recitalist. A coloratura mezzo-soprano, she performs a wide range of music from 19th‑century Romantic operas to works by Handel and Mozart. She studied at Wichita State University and the Academy of Vocal Arts, and began her professional career in the mid-1990s through young‑artist programs at Santa Fe Opera and Houston Grand Opera. Her major debuts include La Scala in La Cenerentola (2000/01), the Royal Opera House in The Cunning Little Vixen (2003), and the Metropolitan Opera as Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro (2005/06). She has taken part in world premieres of several operas, including Jackie O, Little Women, Great Scott, and The Hours. DiDonato has won three Grammy Awards for Best Classical Vocal Solo, in 2012, 2016, and 2020. She grew up in an Irish‑American family; her father was an architect and her mother wrote recipes. Although she first planned to teach vocal music, a PBS broadcast of Don Giovanni inspired her to pursue opera. She married Alex DiDonato in 1990 (divorced 2004) and then Leonardo Vordoni in 2006 (divorced 2013); she now lives near Barcelona. In 2008 she performed at the Royal Opera House after breaking her fibula, finishing the run on crutches. Her later career includes a 2013 Last Night of the Proms appearance, Carnegie Hall masterclasses, the 2016 album In War & Peace, and the 2022 Met premiere of The Hours as Virginia Woolf. She released Songplay in 2019, and in 2025 she debuted in Australia with Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été, while continuing to teach and give masterclasses.