Wherever Joyce DiDonato makes a debut she creeps in at the back door and leaves by the front. "And when I get invited back," she says, "I come in the front door to a great welcome."
It is a front-door entrance for DiDonato on Monday at Covent Garden, where she sings Rosina in the Royal Opera's new production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville. The American mezzo-soprano arrived in London three seasons ago, as the Fox in Janácek's The Cunning Little Vixen. She has since established herself as the leading Rossini mezzo-soprano on both sides of the Atlantic, and now stands on the cusp of stardom.
Having ventured Cherub- ino (The Marriage of Figaro) last month for her Metropolitan Opera debut, she will return next season as Rosina. After conquering Milan in the title role of La Cenerentola, she talks of tackling the dramatic roles Rossini wrote for Isabella Colbran. For DiDonato, 36, "it has been the right way to build a career. I'm not a latecomer, but I didn't break out of the starting gate at 22. The steps have been progressive enough but organic enough."
DiDonato - the name is a relic of an early marriage, not a sign of Italian heritage - is what is known as the complete package: consummate professional, intelligent singer, natural actor. Add sincerity and gracefulness, and you have the opposite of the generic American singer. She reminds older critics of Teresa Berganza, but unlike the Spanish mezzo at a similar stage in her career Di-Donato's interests extend well beyond Mozart and Rossini.
Her forthcoming Wigmore Hall recital - an ingenious portrait-in-song of Venice - ranges from Fauré to the English composer Michael Head. Her new compact disc is a charismatic tour of Bernstein, Copland and Jake Heggie. Having served an apprenticeship in the Houston Opera Studio, where world premieres are part of the curriculum, she is a "cheerleader" for new music because of the way it informs her approach to older music:
"I try to avoid anything that's 'just tradition', not because I'm anti-tradition, but because I want to have the licence to put my own stamp on a part and make people listen. I wantRosina to be a surprising character."
Unusually for a lyric mezzo, DiDonato is torecord the soprano title role of Handel's Alcina, to which she can be expected tobring a very different colouring. Gluck, Massenet and Strauss also lie on thehorizon.
How does the singer reconcile such diverse styles with the technique required for Rossini? DiDonato says the fundamentals remain the same. "It doesn't matter whether it's Rossinian coloratura or Straussian declamation - it all comes from the way the composer sets the text. That's what we use to colour the music. If you gloss over the words it becomes vanilla. I don't change my technique from composer to composer. My goal is to have the best and most adaptable technique possible.
"I always want to be singing on the breath, on a pure vowel, with the least amount of interference muscularly. If I'm doing those three things I should be able to go from A to Z any time. If A is the whitest-of-white soft tones and Z is biggest full-throttle, and I have every colour and nuance in between, it's my job to have all those at my disposal, within my capacity as a high mezzo-soprano. It's really that simple."
'Il barbiere di Siviglia' is at the Royal Opera House, London, December 19 to January 18. Tel 020 7304 4000. Joyce DiDonato's Wigmore Hall recital is on January 16. Tel 020 7935 2141. Her new CD is on the Eloquentia label
