Joyce DiDonato will sing the national anthem tonight at Game 7 of the baseball World Series, in her hometown of Kansas City.
DiDonato – a lifelong Kansas City Royals fan – was selected after a fan started a social media campaign based around the hashtag #letjoycesing. The campaign quickly became viral, resulting in a Change.org petition which received over 3,000 signatures, as well as coverage in New York Times sports section, The Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Magazine, Kansas City Star, and UK Independent, among others.
DiDonato is riding the crest of a wave just now, with rave reviews for her new album, Stella di Napoli, with an unusual launch performance at the Gowanus Ballroom above the Serret Metalworks factory in Brooklyn. The album debuted at #1 on the classical charts in the US, UK and France.
She also gave well-received recitals at London's Wigmore Hall with no less than Sir Antonio “Tony” Pappano as her accompanist, and she kicked off her Carnegie Hall Perspectives series last Sunday with a performance of Handel's Alcina, which the New York Times dubbed four hours of “Handel heaven.” She will return on November 4 for the next Perspectives performance in a recital with frequent collaborator pianist David Zobel.
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
