Joyce DiDonato, Mezzo-soprano
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Piano

Each time that operatic superstar Joyce DiDonato comes to our series, she brings an element of surprise. This most welcome return is no exception, offering us the rare opportunity to experience Franz Schubert’s iconic song-cycle, Winterreise, (“Winter’s Journey”), from a previously unexplored perspective. This musical monodrama leads us through the wandering despair of a protagonist whose heartbreak gives way to oblivion after his beloved falls for another. But “what happens to the winter’s journey,” DiDonato asks, “when we feel it through the heart of the one who was the impetus of such agony and despair? The survivor. The one left behind.” Metropolitan Opera and Philadelphia Orchestra Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin puts down his baton in his Princeton University Concerts debut to join the voice “nothing less than 24-carat gold” (Times of London) in answering this question. Together, they take us on an intimate and profound winter’s journey—reminding us that the inner, private world that we can access through music does not exist in isolation and that the songs that we have heard so many times before gain new meaning each time that they are sung.