Washington Post: “An opera star is born — with years of hard work”

Joyce spoke to Anne Midgette at the Washington Post in advance of her Herodiade performance (role: Salome) with Washington Concert Opera on Sunday. Here’s a snippet of the resulting feature:

El-Khoury’s voice is distinctive. It’s an instrument with a quality of smoky darkness, but an easy upper extension that makes bel canto roles — such as Donizetti’s “Maria Stuarda,” which she recently sang at the Seattle Opera — her preferred repertoire right now. But she’s also just sung Liu, the slave girl in Puccini’s “Turandot” at Opera Philadelphia (where the Philadelphia Inquirer critic David Patrick Stearns praised her “floated high notes that recalled the glory years of Montserrat Caballé”) and the title role in “Emmeline,” by Tobias Picker, in St. Louis this past summer. (“It’s a big voice, an important voice,” wrote the critic Sarah Bryan Miller of her performance.)
-Washington Post, full article here.