NEW YORK ā Embarking on her most ambitious season yet, Lise Davidsen is giving a solo recital at the Metropolitan Opera, making her Carnegie Hall debut, and performing three major roles sheās never sung in staged productions.
At 36, the Norwegian soprano will become the youngest singer in recent Met history to perform such a recital when she takes the stage on Sept. 14 with piano accompanist James Baillieu for an evening of songs and opera arias.
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āRecitals at the Met are pretty few and far between,ā said Peter Gelb, the companyās general manager. āWe reserve them for artists who are truly extraordinary, and sheās a multigenerational talent. I wanted her New York recital debut to be at the Met and not anywhere else.ā
As for Davidsen, she said her first reaction when Gelb invited her was: āReally? Are you serious?ā But once she got over her surprise she ājust jumped on itā and began planning the program.
āOf course itās scary because itās a huge room,ā she said of the 3,800-seat Met. āIāve been joking about what if itās just 100 people there. It would be a very small audience.ā (In fact, tickets have been selling briskly although there are plenty of seats still available.)
Like most opera singers, Davidsen said she finds giving recitals a very different challenge.
āItās surprisingly fragile, just me and the pianist,ā she said in a Zoom interview last month from Turku, Finland, where she was preparing for a concert.
āThereās something very direct from me to you compared to an opera where Iām someone else,ā she said. ā⦠I canāt hide behind the role. Itās a much more direct view into the person that I am.ā
From the moment she burst onto the international scene in 2015, Davidsen has awed critics and audiences alike with her enormous voice and effortless high notes. One of her early roles was the title character in Richard Straussās āAriadne auf Naxos,ā³ and when she performed it at the Met, Zachary Woolfe wrote in The New York Times that her sound was so āarrestingly powerful and visceralā that āyou feel it as almost physical presence ā pressing against your chest, raising the hairs on the back of your neck.ā
This past season, however, another aspect of her artistry came to the fore as she took on parts that called for a more nuanced approach.
Her triumph at the Met as the Marschallin in Straussās āDer Rosenkavalierā last spring surprised some listeners since much of the role is sung in almost a conversational style. āFor me the extraordinary part of her performance was her musicality,ā Gelb said, āand though she has a voice that is literally more powerful than any other singer you could hear on the stage of the Met, she was able to modulate her singing so that she didnāt blow the other singers off the stage.ā
A few months later she took on the role of Elisabeth of Valois in Verdiās āDon Carloā at the Royal Opera House in London, and won raves for her dramatic intensity as well as her singing ā particularly the many soft high notes the part requires.
Thatās something Davidsen acknowledges she has worked hard to master.
āItās definitely easier to sing the high notes full out,ā she said. āI think my control in piano is much better now than it used to be. Itās something I worked on.ā
Freddie De Tommaso, , a young British tenor who has partnered with Davidsen in recitals and did two concert performances of Pucciniās āToscaā with her this summer in Bergen, Norway, said that āsometimes if weāre singing something together and I have to start, I forget to sing ā Iām so enthralled listening to her.ā
āThe things she can do with such an instrument ... itās incredible,ā he said. āBut itās the quiet high I find spellbinding. To be able to sing high and quiet for any singer, that is the Holy Grail.ā
Her new roles this season should give her ample opportunity to display the diversity of her art.
In November, sheāll debut at Chicagoās Lyric Opera in the title role of Janacekās āJenufa,ā a part she performed in concert in Amsterdam in 2021. Her co-star will be the great Swedish soprano Nina Stemme.
Sheāll return to New York in the winter for Verdiās āLa Forza del Destino,ā the companyās first new production of the work in nearly 30 years. Sheāll have one opportunity to try out the role of Leonora beforehand with a concert version in Oslo in October. While sheās in rehearsal in New York, sheāll appear at Carnegie Hall for the first time, singing Wagnerās āWesendonck Lieder,ā songs that contain thematic material he would later use in āTristan und Isolde.ā
Then itās on to Paris for one of the highest-profile roles for any soprano, Straussā āSalome.ā The one-act opera ends with a solo lasting more than 15 minutes sung to the severed head of John the Baptist.
Davidsen will perform that final scene in concert in Madrid in January but otherwise will be tackling the role for the first time.
āItās quite intense, but itās a shorter role. Shorter and bigger at the same time,ā she said. āI look on it like a race where you have to pace yourself.ā
While sheās taking on a new Strauss role and doing more Verdi and Puccini, much of the opera world is waiting for the day she begins singing the two Wagnerian parts that represent the pinnacle of the dramatic repertory: Isolde, and Brünnhilde in the āRingā cycle.
āI can say that I havenāt started studying them yet, but I have started planning them,ā Davidsen said. One of those roles ā she wonāt say which ā is likely coming in the next four to five years.
āOne of the reasons Iām waiting is because a part of me is afraid that when I do that, thatās all Iāll be doing,ā she said. āMaybe that is fine, but maybe I still want to do other things. Then I just have to work hard and prove to them that I can.ā
Davidsen has a lot to celebrate these days in her personal as well as her professional life. She recently became engaged to a former TV producer who first encountered her, appropriately enough, at the opera.
As she tells it, he had gone to Londonās Royal Opera House to hear star German tenor Jonas Kaufmann singing in Beethovenās āFidelio.ā Kaufmannās co-star happened to be a certain Norwegian soprano.
āHe contacted me, and it was surreal that I answered him because I donāt answer people on my social media in that way,ā Davidsen said, āHe asked for a coffee and I thought, yeah, maybe, and we met.ā
Now he travels with her as she keeps a dizzying schedule.
āHe loves to support me and be with me, which I never thought existed,ā she said. āI remember saying to a friend of mine that I could never find someone because they would never be able to travel and live my life.
āAnd then I met him.ā