Stella di Napoli

World premiere recordings and Italianate rarities from the queen of Bel Canto and coloratura. Following the success of her crowd-sourced ‘Best Of’ collection reJoyce and her electrifying Drama Queens album of Baroque arias, Joyce DiDonato returns to her heartland repertoire to celebrate the birth of Bel Canto opera in 19th-century Naples. On Stella di Napoli (Star of Naples), the American mezzo-soprano’s creamy tone and dramatic prowess breathe new life into little-known arias by Mercadante, Michele Carafa (a student of Cherubini and close friend of Rossini), Carlo Valentini and the prolific opera composer Giovanni Pacini, whose Stella di Napoli (1845) gives the album its title. Joyce worked closely with Italian conductor Riccardo Minasi (whose previous projects include Bellini’s Norma with Cecilia Bartoli) to bring three unjustly neglected arias to light in new editions and world premiere recordings. Alongside these little-known gems, Joyce presents a sumptuous Bel Canto banquet with music by the three greats — Bellini, Rossini and Donizetti — including the latter’s Maria Stuarda: a tour-de-force signature role for Joyce, recently screened in cinemas and released on DVD from the New York Metropolitan Opera. Joyce DiDonato won a 2013 Grammy for her last Bel Canto album Diva, Divo, declared “an ideal vehicle for her glorious mezzo voice in which the most fiendish coloratura ornaments and trills sound effortless”. (The Observer) “Ms DiDonato’s performance will be pointed to as a model of singing in which all components of the art form — technique, sound, color, nuance, diction — come together in service to expression and eloquence. Ms. DiDonato is simply magnificent, singing with plush richness and aching beauty.” The New York Times