The Diva Machine

What makes a diva?

In this intimate lecture-recital, award-winning soprano Catherine Hooper joins pianist and composer Pavel Timofeyevsky to explore the extraordinary lives of opera’s most legendary divas: Giuditta Pasta, Maria Malibran, Pauline Viardot, and Maria Callas, alongside the rivals who challenged, provoked, and sometimes haunted them.

Through live performance and storytelling, we trace how these women shaped the operatic repertoire itself. From Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, written for Pasta at the height of her fame, to the Classical defiance of Mozart, the intimacy of French mélodie by Debussy and Fauré, and the grand emotional landscapes of Cilea, Lehár, and Puccini, the programme reveals how composers wrote for divas: their strengths, their vulnerabilities, and their unmistakable stage presence.

This is a journey into the psychology of stardom: how a diva is created, how she survives at the top, and why - long after fashions, voices, and theatres change - these figures continue to fascinate us.