Joyce DiDonato
Winner of the 2012 Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo, Joyce DiDonato entrances audiences and critics alike across the globe, and has been proclaimed ‘perhaps the most potent female singer of her generation’ by The New Yorker. With a voice ‘nothing less than 24-carat gold’ according to the Times, DiDonato has soared to the top of the industry as both a performer and a fierce arts advocate, gaining international prominence in operas by Rossini, Handel and Mozart, as well as through her wide-ranging, acclaimed discography.

Born in Kansas and a graduate of Wichita State University and The Academy of Vocal Arts, Joyce DiDonato trained on the young artist programmes of San Francisco, Houston, and Santa Fe opera companies. Her signature parts include the bel canto roles of Rossini, leading the Financial Times to declare her Elena in La Donna del Lago, ‘simply the best singing I’ve heard in years’.

Much in demand on the recital circuit, in 2013 DiDonato was acclaimed for her debut recital tour of South America, where she will return in the summer of 2014. Recently she has appeared in concert and recital in Berlin, Vienna, Toulouse, Milan and Aspen. She rounded off the season as the guest singer at the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.

In opera she appeared last season as Romeo I Capuleti e i Montecchi for San Francisco Opera and the Bayerische Staatsoper, in the title role of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda for the Metropolitan Opera New York, and as Elena La donna del lago at Covent Garden and for Santa Fe Opera. Highlights in the current season include I Capuleti e i Montecchi in her native Kansas City, Cendrillon at the Liceu Barcelona, La Clemenza di Tito at the Lyric Opera Chicago, and a return to the Metropolitan Opera as Angelina La Cenerentola. DiDonato will end the current season in the title role of Maria Stuarda at the Royal Opera House.

An exclusive recording artist with Erato/Warner Classics, DiDonato’s Grammy-Award-winning solo CD, Diva Divo, comprises arias by male and female characters, celebrating the rich dramatic world of the mezzo-soprano. Her next recording, Drama Queens, was exceptionally well received, both on disc and on several international tours. A retrospective of her first ten years of recordings entitled ReJoyce! was released in August 2013.

Other honours include the highly-prized Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards in 2010, as well as Recital of the Year for the album Colbran, the Muse. She is an Inductee of the Gramophone Hall of Fame and has collected a German Echo Klassik Award as Female Singer of the Year, in addition to the Mets Beverly Sills Award, the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Singer of the Year, and citations from Operalia and the Richard Tucker and George London Foundations. She was recently awarded the prestigious Premio Franco Abbiati Award for Best Singer 2011.

Il pomo d’oro
is an orchestra founded in the year 2012 with a special focus on opera, but equally committed to instrumental performance in various formations. The musicians united in this group are among the best to be found worldwide for authentic and vivid interpretation on period instruments. Together with the young chief conductor Maxim Emelyanychev they form an ensemble of outstanding quality, combining stylistic knowledge, the highest technical skills, and artistic enthusiasm. The collaboration with violinist and conductor Riccardo Minasi led to an award winning first recording (Vivaldi, Per l’Imperatore). The second recording, Vivaldi’s violin concerts Per Pisendel with Dmitry Sinkovsky as soloist and conductor, received a Diapason d’Or. In 2012, il pomo d’oro also recorded 3 solo CDs with three countertenors – Max Emanuel Cencic (Venezia), Xavier Sabata (Bad Guys) and Franco Fagioli (Arias for Caffarelli), under Riccardo Minasi’s direction. The album Arias for Caffarelli was awarded the Choc de l’annee 2013 by the French magazine ‘Classica’. A further contribution to the Naive-Vivaldi-Edition was a recording of the Concerti per due violini, played and directed by Riccardo Minasi and Dmitry Sinkovsky, released in October 2013. In conjunction with a book project about the Venetian Gondola by American writer Donna Leon, il pomo d’oro recorded a collection of ancient Venetian Barcarole, sung by Vincenzo Capezzuto. A recital of various Agrippina Arias – most of them world premieres on CD – with the Swedish mezzosoprano Ann Hallenberg, directed by Riccardo Minasi, was released in 2015. Agrippina won the International Classic Music Award and the International Opera Award. A second album with Max Emanuel Cencic, Arie Napoletane (directed by Maxim Emelyanychev, was released in November 2015. It includes many world premiere recordings of the still to be rediscovered Neapolitan repertoire. In 2016, il pomo d’oro recorded its first recital with the American mezzosoprano Joyce DiDonato, In War & Peace, released in November 2016, followed by a concert tour in Europe and the US, conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev. A second recital with Ann Hallenberg was recorded in the fall 2016, presenting Greatest Hits from the Venetian Carnevale 1729 – il pomo d’oro’s first recording under the direction of Stefano Montanari. The recording season 2016 closed with a first collaboration with Enrico Onofri and the young Italian soprano Francesca Aspromonte. In March 2017, il pomo d’oro, led by Zefira Valova, recorded a new recital of Handel-Arias with countertenor Franco Fagioli.

il pomo d’oro so far recorded four complete operas: Handel’s Tamerlano, Catone in Utica by Leonardo Vinci, – awarded with an Echo Klassik 2016 – Handel’s Partenope (all directed by Riccardo Minasi), and Handel’s Ottone (directed by George Petrou). Among the singers are to be heard Franco Fagioli, Max Emanuel Cencic, Xavier Sabata and Karina Gauvin.

Further instrumental recordings include Haydn’s concerts for harpsichord and violin, co-directed by Maxim Emelanychev as harpsichord-soloist and Riccardo Minasi as violin-soloist (to be released in early 2016), and a violoncello recital with Edgar Moreau with works by Haydn, Boccherini, Platti, Graziani, Vivaldi, which was released in November 2015. Both recordings won the Echo Klassik Award 2016. A new recording with violinist Dmitry Sinkovsky explores the repertoire of the Virtuosissimi of the baroque violin, such as Locatelli, Tartini, Leclair, Pisendel, and others.

Il pomo d’oro is a frequent guest in the most important concert venues in Europe and the United States, such as Théatre des Champs Elysées, Theater an der Wien, Barbican Center, Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall (2017), Philharmonie Berlin (2017), Herkulessaal München, and many more.

In 2016 il pomo d’oro became ambassador of EL SISTEMA GREECE, a humanitarian project to fight the loss of home and identity by offering musical education and encourage own musical activity, to bring concerts, to create cultural transfer by exchanging musical traditions and to help integration by combining musical and language education. Il pomo d’oro plays concerts and offers workshops and music lessons according to the El Sistema method on a frequent regular basis in various refugee camps in Greece.

Maxim Emelyanychev
is an outstanding representative of the rising generation of very young conductors.

Born in 1988 to a family of musicians, Maxim Emelyanychev first studied conducting at the Nizhny Novgorod Music School then continued his education in the conducting class of Gennady Rozhdestvensky in Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory and fortepiano and harpsichord class of Maria Uspenskaya.

He is a prize-winner of numerous international competitions, among them: Hans von Bülow piano competition (Meiningen, 2012), Musica Antica harpsichord competition (Brugge, 2010), Volkonsky harpsichord competition (2010, Moscow).

He made his conducting debut at the age of 12 and has since then conducted both baroque and symphonic orchestras. In the field of Baroque music, he leads Novosibirsk Musica Aeterna and Il Pomo d’Oro - the Italian ensemble of which he is the chief conductor along with Riccardo Minasi.

Last season, he conducted Pomo d’Oro in an outstanding concert performance of Handel’s Tamerlano at Versailles, Hamburg, Vienne et Cologne. Maxim is the creator and leader of "Veritas" chamber orchestra.

In 2015-2016, his projects with Pomo d’Oro include performances of Tamerlano at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and the Barbican London, as well as a worldwide tour, with Max-Emanuel Cencic for Napolitan arias, that will take them to New York, Munich, Paris, Lyon, Rouen, Bern, Séville …

He collaborates with such renowned artists as Riccardo Minasi, Max Emanuel Cencic, Xavier Sabata, Julia Lezhneva, Sophie Karthäuser, Franco Fagioli, Dmitry Sinkovsky, Alexei Lubimov, Theodor Currentzis, Joyce Di Donato.

His career with symphonic orchestras first started with numerous Russian orchestras – National Philharmonic of Russia, Soloists of Nizhny Novgorod or Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic to name a few - and goes on internationally with the Sinfonietta Sofia, the Sinfonia Varsovia or the Real Orquesta Sinfonica de Sevilla, who invites him to conduct a production of Don Giovanni at Teatro de la Maestranza.

During the 2015-16 season, he will conduct the Orquesta Nacional de Espana, the Real Filarmonica de Galicia and the Real Orquesta Sinfonica de Sevilla, who reinvited him after his Don Giovanni. He will also be heard in Paris, with Il Pomo d’Oro, at Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, leading a Haydn/Mozart with Katia and Marielle Labèque. He will join them at the keyboard to the performance of Mozart Three-Piano Concerto.

Maxim received the most prestigious Russian theatre award the 'Golden Mask' as harpsichordist in stage production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro of Perm Opera Theatre. Erato projects include a Haydn double album, as conductor and harpsichordist with Il Pomo d'Oro, and a forthcoming album of Baroque arias with Joyce DiDonato and Il Pomo d’Oro.