The Show Must Go On: Joyce DiDonato is One Bad-Ass Rosina

And I mean that in the best possible sense…

Last night’s opening of an eagerly anticipated production of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Royal Opera offered more than the usual chaos one hopes for in this comic gem of an opera.

The evening’s Rosina, amazing mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato slipped and injured her leg just after singing the opera’s signature aria “Una voce poco fa….” According to a lucky member of the audience, Ms. DiDonato picked herself up, brushed herself off, and carried on with the show, despite an obvious injury to her leg. And, by all accounts, she delivered a fabulous performance.

(For a taste of how terrific DiDonato is in this role, here she is in a 2007 Met production of barbiere.)

As it turns out, DiDonato actually fractured her leg. (Hope the champagne in the post-performance photos helped with the pain, Joyce!)

So much for divas being temperamental and difficult.

In her writing, and in interviews, DiDonato always comes across as thoroughly professional and highly respectful of her colleagues, her art and her talent—and thankful for the great gift G-d, providence or sheer biological luck has given her. Her determination to continue the performance in what must have been some pretty serious pain (if the photos at Intermezzo are any indication) is yet another hint of her dedication.

She joins the ranks of other tough cookies who carried on with the show despite mishaps that might have felled lesser deities:

Éva Marton, the estimable Hungarian soprano, who dislocated her jaw in a bit of stage business during a 1986 Met performance of Puccini’s Tosca, but finished the show anyway, later telling a reporter that she simply adjusted her way of singing—“I shaped the vowels with my tongue.”

Last year, tenor Gary Lehman was pitched into the prompter’s box by a sliding mat during a Met performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, but finished the show anyway. (He subsequently withdrew from what seemed to be a cursed production: Lehman was a replacement for tenor John Mac Master, who was himself a replacement for originally scheduled tenor Ben Heppner, who had withdrawn from the production after some very public vocal difficulties—attributed to a virus—with the role. Several days earlier, soprano Deborah Voigt had been forced to quit mid-scene when she suffered a sudden bout of nausea, and was replaced by cover Janice Baird, who ended up making a surprise—and quite respectable—Met debut in what is arguably the toughest role in all of opera. Bravi all around!)

A few years back, I watched über-bass Samuel Ramey fall off a piece of scenery he was climbing and land with an alarming “thud” on the stage during a San Francisco Opera production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The mishap occurred just at the end of Act I, so fortunately the curtain came down immediately without disrupting the performance. The audience spent the interval worrying about Mr. Ramey and expecting the dreaded announcement from the curtain: “Mr. Ramey regrets….” Fortunately, Ramey was apparently unhurt and undaunted, and proceeded to give Mozart his all.

So, Joyce, here’s wishing you a speedy and uneventful recovery, and many more wonderful Rosinas to come.