“You know, I am a mezzo-soprano ; I can play all roles.” It takes some self-confidence and a good dose of humor to start such a sentence in full recital. Joyce DiDonato lacks neither the one nor the other and certainly not of talent as was witnessed Thursday night, the audience, under the spell, the Festival of Auvers-sur-Oise. The beautiful evening was given in the church of Our Lady of the Assumption, known to the world since Vincent Van Gogh has painted over 130 years ago. And the nave was filled to overflowing to hear a program as tortuous and full of pitfalls that the paths taken by the painter in the countryside in the Vexin.

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Imagine this: the cantata Arianna a Naxos of Haydn, two of the arias of the Wedding Mozart’s Dopo l oscuro nembo of Bellini, a piece of zarzuela, the two main pages of the Faust of Berlioz, an extract of the Otello of Rossini, songs venetian, Reynaldo Hahn, and, by bis, the global hits, Non ti scordar di me and Over the Rainbow . More than an hour and a half of music swallowed almost of a treaty by the diva of Kansas. It was at this table already very baroque as Vivaldi and Handel to have a complete picture of the wide repertoire of the mezzo, which has just celebrated its fifty years.

of course, the piano is very intelligent and sensitive of David Zobel greatly facilitates the thing: in a few steps, he carries his beautiful world without any difficulty of Ireland-romantic designed by Bellini in Spain fantasized of Pablo Luna. The complicity of the Toulousain and the singer, who have known each other for twenty years now, is as strong as ever printing. It is to be understood Zobel deal with through the landscape of the Canzone del salice . And see the singer, turned to the pianist, send him loving the first steps of this little masterpiece-signed Rossini.

An interpretation that leaves you speechless “You know, I am a mezzo-soprano ; I can play all roles”: it takes a certain aplomb and a healthy dose of humour to start such a sentence in full recital. Joyce DiDonato lacks neither the one nor the other. Jean-Baptiste Garat

love, Joyce DiDonato is overflowing, turn-Ariadne abandoned, candid Cherub, Suzanne, in full possession of his means or Desdemona trapped by fate. It is a wonder in the song cycle Venezia of Reynaldo Hahn with which it rotates for a long time already, camping out as well the beautiful driving in the gondola that the seducer transalpine gominé. And if the pronunciation of the French of his Daisy is less accurate than in Strasbourg, where she comes to save Damnation of Faust with Michael Spyres under the baton of John Nelson (forthcoming from Erato), the force of his interpretation, leaving the audience speechless. The berlioziens that were not in Auvers Thursday evening will be able to catch up with summer Nights in August, if you follow the diva to Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam or Hamburg. Or wait for Romeo and Juliet with Cyrille Dubois, Nicolas Courjal and always John Nelson, in Strasbourg next spring.

As for the Festival of Auvers-sur-Oise, it continued for two weeks with a few beautiful evenings yet in perspective: Renaud Capuçon in a programme of chamber music Saturday, June 22, the counter-tenor Jakub-Josef Orlinski and all It Pomo d’oro Friday, 28, The Four Seasons of Vivaldi by the Musicians of Saint-Julien, 29, a recital of Schubert, Haydn, Fauré, Satie pianist Kotaro Fukuma on July 3,…

Assisa a piè a salice … Deh, calma , based on Otello of Giachino Rossini, by Joyce DiDonato and David Zobel