Interview: Joyce DiDonato Spends Christmas With Her Favorite Opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors

Joyce DiDonato had a family tradition growing up. Every Christmas, her dad would put on NBC’s televised opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, and she would immerse herself in Gian Carlo Menotti’s story of a young disabled boy who is healed when he offers his crutch to the newly born Christ child as a gift.

DiDonato never expected to actually star in the show, as she will be doing for Lincoln Center Theater his holiday season, under the direction of Kenny Leon. She just so happened to ask Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb if they’d ever stage the hourlong piece at the Met, and thus, a tradition-in-the-making was born, albeit right next door to the legendary opera house.

As she preps to play “The Mother,” DiDonato shared her history with this family production, which offers us the rare chance to see the world through a child’s eyes.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. 

I know little about Amahl and the Night Visitors, but I understand that you grew up on it.
I did. My dad pulled out the LP every Christmas morning. It was such a vivid presence for me every holiday. It’s a Christmas miracle story. It really became a part of my life. People ask me what my favorite opera is, and it has always been this one.

Why?
I think it’s perfect. It’s everything you want opera to be: great story, great music, combined with the real emotional punch. It’s one of those pieces like Peter and the Wolf; you can see what’s happening without even watching it. It’s so evocative. You hear him walking on his crutch and you hear the door open.

Menotti has very specific stage directions, like the staging has to be seen through the eyes of a child. So, the mother is really severe. And the kings are really big. He was writing how a child sees the world, so I think that’s one reason it will hit hard with kids. It’s their language. But it hits hard with adults, too, because we’ve forgotten what it is to see the world through the eyes of a child. And that’s where the gold lies.

Was it always a career goal to do it?
It was never concretely a dream of mine. It wasn’t like “One day I’ll sing the mother.” I just love that opera so much. I was on stage rehearsing The Hours at the Met last year and we had this beautiful trio of young kids in the show, and I looked at this boy and I was like “He looks like Amahl.” I went immediately to Peter Gelb at the Met and I said “What about Amahl?” And he says “Joyce, that’s one of the first operas I ever saw. I’d love to do it, it’s just too small for the Met.”

I think Peter ended up talking with Bartlett Sher [at Lincoln Center Theater] and they loved the idea. Connecting the Met to Lincoln Center Theater like this feels like a beautiful match.

It has an interesting history, having been written for television, which obviously doesn’t happen with opera anymore.
It was commissioned and debuted on NBC on Christmas Eve, which tells us a lot about how times have changed. They put this heartfelt, sophisticated, and very approachable piece on television, live. That’s an extraordinary thing.

What is it like to discover this piece through a performer’s eyes?
It reminds me of all the reasons of why I love music and theater. I feel like I’m that 12-year-old child again, with the hairbrush in my hand in my bedroom.

We were staging the part where Amahl walks, with Kenny Leon, our director, and AJ, our Amahl. It was so interesting. Kenny wasn’t giving him direction. He was putting the responsibility of finding the physicality on AJ’s shoulders. Watching AJ figure out the mechanics of what it would be like to never put weight on this leg, and then, all of a sudden, he can walk, was just extraordinary. The music is going, this tremolo is happening, and I saw AJ really going through the deep process of metalizing this and then letting it happen physically. It was exhilarating.

This is your first time doing the traditional theater schedule, isn’t it?
Yes. And I’m sitting here thinking about how Audra McDonald did Gypsy. Maybe I could do that twice a week. It’s a very different world with very different pacing. But at the end of the day, we’re all talking the same language and trying to accomplish the same thing. The means are slightly different and the technique is slightly different. But eight shows a week is no joke.

The Newhouse is probably the smallest venue you’ve ever played. At least compared to the Met. That must feel a little confronting.
You know, one of the things I’ve learned from doing some of the live HD broadcasts…When I first went into the world of opera, we didn’t have that. You have to fill the 4,000 seats. And then the cameras came in and everything is caught. I’ve always tried to be an authentic and honest performer anyway, but if you needed to, you could get away with a few things. When the camera’s there? No. So, in a way, that has trained me for the intimacy of something like this. There’s nowhere to hide. Eyes are on you all the time. They see everything.

I worked with Lenny Foglia on Dead Man Walking, and it was the first opera that he’d ever done. We had this experience in the rehearsal room  with so much authenticity and specificity and it was thrilling. I walked onto the stage for our first stage rehearsal and I grabbed his hand and I was like “Don’t let me get all operatic.” You know, big. And he said “Joyce, there are two things that exist on the stage: that which is true and that which is false.” True can be really big or really small, and false can be really big or really small. That’s been my North Star.

I like the challenge of knowing that people are six feet away. They’re going to feel it in their bodies in a visceral way.