Opera divas Joyce DiDonato and Renée Fleming will grace Twin Cities stages

Call it a confluence of divas.

Before it devolved into a pejorative for someone who can be arrogant and difficult, diva was the Latin word for “goddess” and customarily was applied to a magnificent woman opera singer. A singer like soprano Renée Fleming or mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato.

They’re arguably America’s two biggest stars of the classical vocal world, each having earned a plethora of awards for their work on both stage and recordings. And they’ll soon be across the Mississippi River from one another on the same weekend.

DiDonato will launch the Minnesota Orchestra season with a Hector Berlioz song cycle at Minneapolis’ Orchestra Hall and Fleming will perform a Schubert Club recital at St. Paul’s Ordway Concert Hall built around music from her Grammy-winning 2021 album, “Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene,” backed by projections of images from the National Geographic Society.

We talked with local experts about what’s so great about these two divas.

“The quality of a singer’s voice is important, but what is much more important is the singer’s ability to work together with other musicians,” said Thomas Søndergård, Minnesota Orchestra’s music director, who will conduct DiDonato and the orchestra in Berlioz’s “Les Nuits d’ete”: “What I love about both Fleming and DiDonato is their amazing musicality. You can really hear how they both listen and work together with the instruments and not the least how much they both love to do exactly that.”

John Taylor Ward, bass-baritone and co-artistic director of the Lakes Area Music Festival, admires Fleming’s unmistakably rich voice.

He considers DiDonato a master at fusing music and drama.

“Her performances radiate total commitment, and it’s that fearless dedication that lets the shimmering steel of her voice truly shine,” Ward said.

He explained how both Fleming and DiDonato weren’t considered undisputed prodigies early in their careers.

Both were music education majors who early on saw teaching careers in their future — Fleming at the State University of New York at Potsdam and DiDonato at Wichita State University.

“That hard-won path forward gave them vocal techniques and careers with a special kind of rock-solid foundation,” Ward said.

“Both Renée Fleming and Joyce DiDonato represent something newer — an American style rooted in sincerity and simplicity, infused with influences that reach well beyond the boundaries of classical tradition,“ Ward added.

Soprano Maria Jette considers DiDonato a splendid coloratura singer.

“Her Rossini, Donizetti, Mozart and Handel are all thrilling, as much for the pleasure she clearly takes in her natural ability to accurately emit lots of fast notes as for her stylistic expertise and beautiful sound,” Jette said.

Fleming’s pleasure in singing also feels evident, Jette said, “but with that different sort of vocal glamour that’s lush and creamy, and spins out long notes in a way that was never one of my own strengths. Long, long lines of golden tone!”

Joseph Li, vice president, artistic of Minnesota Opera, described working with DiDonato on Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” at Houston Grand Opera in 2011 as an unforgettable experience in his career.

Clara Osowski, a mezzo-soprano and founder and artistic director of the Source Song Festival, said DiDonato has carved her own path as a singer and that’s what the next generation of professional singers are expected to do.

“This generation of singer, amid all sorts of challenges, has to find their own voice, literally and figuratively, to have any success,” Osowski said.

Barry Kempton, the Schubert Club’s artistic and executive director, describes Fleming and DiDonato as two of the most intelligent and engaging musicians with whom he’s ever worked.

“It’s easy to understand how Renée gained the label, ‘The Beautiful Voice,’” he said. “It seems to me that while we listen to her sing, the ugliness of the world dissolves and we are enveloped in the serenity of her regal voice.”

Kempton lauded DiDonato as well.

“Those who get to hear Renée and Joyce in St. Paul and Minneapolis in a single weekend will certainly enjoy an unforgettable experience.”

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

With: Conductor Thomas Søndergård

What: Works by Leonard Bernstein, Hector Berlioz, Guillaume Connesson and Richard Strauss

When: 11 a.m. Sept. 18, 8 p.m. Sept. 19.

Tickets: $47-$125, 612-371-5656 or minnesotaorchestra.org

With: Pianist Inon Barnatan

What: “Voice of Nature: The Anthropocene”

When: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 19.

Where: Ordway Concert Hall, 345 Washington St., St. Paul