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- DIDI BALLE's credits as a produced playwright and stage director include numerous commissions, broadcasts and staged productions of her work spanning Symphonic Plays™, radio musicals, plays, musical theater, variety shows, song cycles and opera.
- Didi's shows/musical plays have been commissioned, performed and premiered by companies and orchestras from The Philadelphia Orchestra to the Baltimore Symphony to New York City Opera to The City of London Sinfonia; in venues from Lincoln Center to Verizon Symphony Hall to the Barbican Center for the Arts in London, with performances broadcast live from the BBC to WNYC.
- She's worked with and has been commissioned by world-class conductors including Yannick Nezet-Seguin, (music director of the Metropolitan Opera, and the Philadelphia Orchestra); Stéphane Denève, Principal Conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony and Marin Alsop, music director laureate of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and chief conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.
She's a recipient of a coveted Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship as an opera librettist and spent a month at the Rockefeller Foundation's Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio. Other awards include the Oscar Hammerstein scholarship (two consecutive years) as a Playwright-Lyricist at NYU Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theater Program, where she received her MFA. Thanks to the Hammerstein Foundation for the gift of education. Undergrad: She attended Georgetown's School of Foreign Service for two years before transferring to NYU to pursue her first MFA at the acclaimed NYU Tisch Grad Acting Program.
Didi has directed many of her musical theater works for the stage performed in venues as diverse as Rockefeller Center's Rainbow and Stars to the Eugene O'Neill Theater in Connecticut. She's also directed other writers'/composers' work including Gershwin's "Of Thee I Sing" with a cast of sixty at the Eugene Performing Arts Center with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra.
Didi also worked as an Editor at The New York Times for 13 years.
Other produced work as a playwright, lyricist and librettist includes SONG CYCLES (“Penelope, A Song Cycle” performed at the 92nd St. Y New Music Series (published by Peer Music, based on series of her poems called "Wanderlust"), and OPERA (New York City Opera workshop), and radio musicals (she co-wrote w/Garrison Keillor a weekly musical “The Story of Gloria: A Young Woman of Manhattan” at BAM and The Lamb’s Theater broadcast live by NPR. Her "Radio Rhapsody" (playwright/lyricist and stage director) premiered by Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall; subsequent productions included performances in London with the City of London Sinfonia at The Barbican Center for the Arts (broadcast live by the BBC).
The largest body of her work is a genre she herself created called Symphonic Plays™ These acclaimed innovative full-length musical plays are a dynamic synthesis of classical theatre and classical music featuring Actors, Conductors and Symphony Orchestras all sharing the same stage. They are artfully directed and fully-staged, with gorgeous lighting, costumes and video design plus streamlined sets/props. Since 2008 she’s received thirteen stand-alone commissions by major American orchestras to create, write and direct full-length symphonic plays with world premieres. They include:
SYMPHONIC PLAYS™
Spring 2020
Didi Balle was in the process of directing a new production of her symphonic play "MAURICE RAVEL: A Musical Journey from Paris to Tangier" with acclaimed Music Director Stéphane Denève, Principal Conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, which was to be preformed at Powell Hall on May 1, 2020. Featuring world-renowned pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O'Conor and Broadway actor Scott Lowell as Maurice Ravel. The performances were cancelled due to COVID-19.
RAVEL A Musical Journey was originally commissioned and premiered by Conductor Stéphane Denève and The New World Symphony. New World Center. Miami Beach. Spring 2018. "... a nearly flawless fusion of musical biography and theater ..."
Fall 2018
Didi was commissioned by The Philadelphia Orchestra and Stéphane Deneve Principal Guest Conductor to create, write and direct two original concert-length Symphonic Plays, which premiered (six concert performances) to great success during the two-week-long Barnes-Stokowski Festival October 2018. These premieres marked Didi's fourth commission as a playwright & stage director from the world-renowned Philadelphia Orchestra to create and direct new symphonic plays for their season.
“The Artful Titans” Play I: "Philadelphia in Paris 1912-1920" featured the legendary Leopold Stokowski (The Creator) and acclaimed Albert C. Barnes (The Collector) brought to life with a cast of Broadway actors sharing the stage with the brilliant French-born conductor, Denève, and the musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra in a fully-staged symphonic play dramatizing the convergent/divergent lives, ambitions and aesthetics of Philadelphia’s pioneering cultural icons: Leopold Stokowski and Albert C. Barnes.
Play 1 opens in 1912 with Stokowski taking the helm of the Philadelphia Orchestra, while Barnes dispatches an emissary to Paris to purchase contemporary art for his burgeoning collection. The dramatic arc explodes with the music of Debussy, Chausson, Milhaud, Poulenc, and Stravinsky as it weaves, dances and shimmers with the art of Matisse, Cézanne, Renoir, Monet, Degas and Picasso living and working in Paris in concentric circles of creative genius.
"The Artful Titans" Play II: "Paris in Philadelphia 1920-1930” is a series of dynamic portraits and dazzling “Impressions” of music, art and theater exploring the innovative experiments and artistic risks taken by two relentless and ruthless visionaries: Stokowski and Barnes while building their respective empires from 1920-1930. Each “canvas” (mise en scène) captures a moment, an arc, an essence, depicting the triumphs and trials in the lives of Stokowski and Barnes. Music infuses each theatrical portrait with color, tone, rhythm and light. Each thematic tableaux/montage bristles with character, conflict, dialogue, infused with music set against the backdrop of Paris and Philadelphia. A symphonic gallery of stylized “impressions” culminating in a dramatic portrayal of two visionaries navigating the uncharted territories of contemporary music and art.
"The Artful Titans" Play One/Week One: "Philadelphia in Paris” (1912-1918) Oct. 11, 12, 13, 2018
"The Artful Titans" Play Two/Week Two: “Paris in Philadelphia” (1920-1930) Oct. 19, 20, 21, 2018
April 2018: The New World Symphony at the behest of Conductor, Stéphane Denève, a renowned French music expert, commissioned Didi Balle to create, write and stage direct a new symphonic play "Ravel: A Musical Journey" which premiered at the New World Center in Miami Beach April 2018.
- The symphonic play featured Stéphane Denève, The New World Symphony, acclaimed actor Scott Lowell in the role of Maurice Ravel, Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano, Kelley O'Connor; Kara Duga, mezzo-soprano; Aaron Crouch, tenor. Kyu Yeon Kim, piano. Projection Designers: Clyde Scott, Michale Matamoros, Shaun Wright. Luke Kritzeck, lighting designer. Dona Granata, Costume Designer. Doug Merilatt, Executive VP Artistic helmed the project, which premiered to great success.
Spring 2017: The Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned and premiered "The Rachmaninoff Trilogy: 3 Musical Plays” for their acclaimed week-long Rachmaninoff Festival with Stéphane Denève, Conductor. Didi Balle's three musical plays with a cast of five Broadway actors playing multiple roles, premiered over three nights at The Kimmel Center's Verizon Hall.
- Play One: "The Breakthrough" set in Russia 1900 dramatizes the psychological hurdles that undermined and ultimately freed 27-year old Sergei Rachmaninoff to write his Second Piano Concerto.
- Play Two: "Musician in Exile" reveals how Rachmaninoff came to revise his First Piano Concerto in a Moscow apartment during the 1917 Revolution, and his subsequent escape from Russia to America where he learned his beloved home/villa had been burned to the ground. In America he reinvented himself as the world's leading concert pianist and continued to compose.
- Play Three: "A Musical Marriage in Philadelphia" explores the extraordinary thirty-year relationship between Rachmaninoff and the Philadelphia Orchestra and its visionary Conductors Leopold Stokowski, and later, Eugene Ormandy.
"The Rachmaninoff Trilogy: 3 Musical Plays” marks the third commission and premieres of a new symphonic play(s) created, written and directed by Didi Balle for The Philadelphia Orchestra. Special Thanks to Jeremy Rothman, Vice President of Artistic and Planning who has artfully helmed all of Balle's commissioned works for the acclaimed Philadelphia Orchestra, which also include:
“Shostakovich: Notes For Stalin” (Maestro Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Music Director and Principal Conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra). This symphonic play written and directed by Didi Balle vividly brings to life with music and theater the harrowing saga of Shostakovich's struggle to compose his Fifth Symphony against terrifying odds: A life-threatening campaign led by Stalin and his henchmen bent on destroying the famous young composer if he fails to obey Stalin's musical dictates. Denounced by Russian authorities as "an enemy of the state," Shostakovich and his family members are threatened by arrest (deported to the prison work camps in Siberia) if he does not create a Russian symphony in perfect keeping with Stalin's rules of what real Russian music sounds like. The symphonic play culminates in an electrifying performance of his Fifth Symphony.
Her first commission and premiere of her work with the Philadelphia Orchestra: “Elements of The Earth: A Musical Adventure" was created for the POA's annual School Concert Series with six performances. The work has since been retitled: "The Secret Life of Isaac Newton." An excellent family concert or school concert.
Maestro Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) first championed Balle’s work and named her the first-ever “Playwright-in-Residence” with a symphony orchestra. Full Press Release. "Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has had its share of resident composers over the years, but it's the first orchestra in the country to merge these two [music and theater] hallowed traditions by engaging a Playwright-in-Residence -- Didi Balle." Baltimore local NPR station interview. Listen HERE
Didi Balle's Symphonic Plays commissioned and premiered by Maestra Alsop and the BSO include:
“CSI: Beethoven” (Premieres: Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore. Strathmore Center for the Performing Arts. Bethesda, Md. Subsequent Performances: Colorado Symphony (Denver Center for the Performing Arts). Didi was commissioned to create/direct a chamber music version of CSI: Beethoven for the University of Delaware New Music Program.
“CSI: Mozart” (Premieres: Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore. Strathmore Center for the Performing Arts. Bethesda, Md.
“Analyze This: Mahler & Freud”(Premieres: Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore. Strathmore Center for the Performing Arts. Bethesda, Md.)
“A Composer Fit for a King: Wagner and King Ludwig II”(Premieres: Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore. Strathmore Center for the Performing Arts. Bethesda, Md.)
“Tchaikovsky: Mad But for Music” (Premieres: Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore. Strathmore Center for the Performing Arts. Bethesda, Md.)
"Radio Rhapsody: A Musical Tribute to Paul Whiteman” (Alsop, Conductor) premiered at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center and has been performed by the City of London Sinfonia (Barbican Center for the Arts London. BBC Live Broadcast); Colorado Symphony (Denver Center for the Performing Arts) and the St. Louis Symphony.
Didi Balle recently completed (story/play/lyrics) a fab two-act musical high-jinks called JOLLY DOGS inspired by the Victorian Music Hall (set in London 1868), with composer and music arranger, Leslie Steinweiss (NYC). It features the Royal Jolly Dogs Company of actors in their final week of performances before being evicted (by a most devious and greedy Lord) from the acclaimed theatre they themselves built: The Royal Jolly Dogs Music Hall. The surrounding cast of characters include Her Majesty, Queen Victoria and Sir Edwin Landseer, renowned artist/painter to the Queen, who captured all of her beloved dogs (and horses and family members and sundry palaces) on canvas. JOLLY DOGS is an Ode to Boisterous Joy, a trademark of the ever-popular Victorian music hall.
A native of Northern California (San Francisco), Didi relocated her home and writing studio from NYC (after many years) to the Napa Valley. Recently she moved a little further west to Healdsburg, a vibrant historic California town in Sonoma County, where she resides with Sasha, a sweet smart GIANT poodle who'd like a show of her own.
Photo Credit: The banner photograph above is of Amelita Galli Curci, a famous early 20th-century Italian-born coloratura. No relation unfortunately.