Joyce DiDonato new album EDEN featuring the world premiere recording by Rachel Portman

“With this project, we’re trying to tell the story of perfection” – Joyce DiDonato

On February 25, world renowned mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato releases a new album EDEN featuring the world premiere recording of a specially commissioned work The First Morning of The World by Rachel Portman. This melodic and enchanting song with text by Gene Scheer, is commissioned specifically for EDEN by DiDonato. Starting with the world premiere from Bozar, Brussels on March 2, DiDonato and Il Pomo D'oro embark on a busy two month world tour.

In this new album, DiDonato once more teams up with Maxim Emelyanychev and Italian Baroque ensemble Il Pomo D'oro to bring together timeless opera arias, new contemporary works, poetry and drama.

Portman described the project as "such a privilege to collaborate with Joyce DiDonato and Gene Scheer on this beautiful and urgent piece for our time".

DiDonato presents the world premiere recording of a new work The First Morning of The World by Rachel Portman, featuring text by Gene Scheer.

Eden explores our individual connection to nature and its impact on our world, it is DiDonato’s passionate belief, and the driving force behind EDEN, that a collective return to our “best selves” is needed to not only address our current climate crisis, but the crisis of heart, as well. By examining our relationship to the natural world and our unique place within it, EDEN invites the listener to explore and search for answers about belonging, purpose, and healing.

“With each passing day,” writes DiDonato, “I trust more and more in the perfect balance, astonishing mystery and guiding force of the natural world around us, how much Mother Nature has to teach us. EDEN is an invitation to return to our roots and to explore whether or not we are connecting as profoundly as we can to the pure essence of our being, to create a new EDEN from within and plant seeds of hope for the future.”

DiDonato introduces the album EDEN