There was a great deal of public anticipation leading to Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen’s recital at the Met. Following her Met triumphs as Ariadne, Chrysothemis and the Marschallin, Davidsen has been heralded by this and other critics as the brightest among the new Met stars and likely to lead the next generation of great Wagnerian sopranos. Thursday’s recital gave every indication that Davidsen is well on her way to making operatic history. Still, a piano and voice recital at the Met is a dicey proposition for any singer, given the challenge of presenting intimate art song settings in the cavernous house. But Davidsen met the challenge by presenting an ambitious program that explored the depth and versatility of her artistry as well as the full scope of her formidable instrument. Davdisen’s voice has the beautifully metallic and straight-tone quality one would expect in this jugendliche-hochdramatische category which makes for ease and mezzo-like clarity in lower ranges. As she ascends, the energy and scale of the voice increases quickly while broadening significantly where, above the staff and on up through high B and C, it rings, or rather trumpets, with firm clarity and energy all while maintaining a luminescent tone quality. These same characteristics, however, can limit her interpretive abilities, especially in the middle and lower ranges where much of the art song repertoire lies.
Joined at the piano by James Baillieu, the two-hour program included a broad spectrum of art songs and several operatic arias. The evening opened with six songs of Edvard Grieg. The first three, in Davidsen’s native tongue, quickly established an artist of poise and natural, but not studied, movements. Grieg’s songs are colorful with an easy folk quality such as in “Til min dreng” where Davidsen whittled her voice down for this simple and tender song to her baby son. Davidsen interrupted the set to introduced the next three Greig German songs and sharing the story of when her agent called her to sing this recital at the Met. She took several more opportunities throughout the evening to speak directly to the enthusiastic New York audience about the program and her journey thus far in music, which only enhanced the personal and intimate connection between singer and audience.
The mood set, Davidsen moved onto Verdi. While she is wise to train in the bel canto repertoire, like her famous predecessors who shared similar vocal qualities, the Verdean style is not without its challenges for a voice like hers. Though Davidsen certainly possess the heft and musicality to sing both Desdemona and Amelia, she has not yet fully mastered the Italian language nor the more subtle aspects of the bel canto style. In the opening lines of Morrò, from Un Ballo in Maschera, Davidsen’s was unable to consistently tailor her voice to match the tender opening lines resulting in vowels that were sometimes lost in expanse of sound. This continued to occur in the aria’s dramatic upward lines but was less problematic given the excitement resulting from the fullness of tone. But Verdi sopranos are known for their ability to achieve highly contrasting degrees of dynamic and lyric articulation. Davidsen’s account of the Ballo aria, while gorgeous throughout, was limited in this respect. She was more successful stylistically in Ave Maria from Otello with its narrower dramatic range. Still, even here, while the Davidsen’s tone was lovely and warm, at times, it overtook the delicate lines of the prayer and inhibited more nuanced responses to the text. Davidson’s ending triadic rise to Ab was ravishing.
The next four songs by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius were a perfect fit Davidsen, given the sweeping and operatic nature of both music and text. Notably, this set was recorded by Kirsten Flagstad and Birgit Nilsson, both of whom can be considered the natural predecessors to Davidsen, so that this programming could be understood to telegraph to us her intended future operatic ambitions. Davidsen was in her element in Var det en dröm (“Was it a dream”) as she was able to layer waves of tone throughout the song’s upwardly, melodic lines. My favorite new song of evening was Flickan kom infrån sin älsklings möte (“The girl came from a lover’s tryst”) where Davidsen so effectively inhabited both mother and daughter as well as the tragedy of first love and first heartbreak.
Davidsen fittingly ended the first half of the concert with a personal ode to the Met Opera house itself in Wagner’s “Dich, teure Halle” from Tannhäuser, singing what she was born to sing. From the opening, trumpeting line, her voice filled the entire hall with warm, golden tone without any apparent effort throughout and on through to its exhilarating finish. Here was history in the making: the early performances of this aria from one who will likely soon take her place as one of the leading interpreters of this role. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvNFUX7M8Gw
Davidsen began the second half of the program in a stunning gold sequin gown and tore into “Uzh polnoch blizitsya” from Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades with velvety and urgent, yet unforced, tone. Tackling the great Schubert, she was most successful at long, dramatic lines of Gretchen am Spinnrade and the menacing Erlkönig where her large, focused instrument enhanced Schubert’s melodramatic writing. She was less successful at the deceptively simple An die Musik where, again, the meditational text and limpid lines were somewhat lost under the weight and fullness of her voice.
She was in more favorable territory with the songs of Richard Strauss with clear advantage in Zueignung and Cäcilie, the latter was which was among the best I have ever heard, save possibly for that of Jessye Norman. But what Davidsen currently lacks in Norman’s interpretative variation she certainly made up for in sheer, undaunted vocalism, taming this most difficult song of the Strauss canon. Befreit‘s long, luxurious vocal lines were pure aural pleasure in Davdisen’s voice. After one hour into the program, however, it was not surprising that Davidsen was less successful in Strauss’s more tender works of Allerseelen, which came off as rather wooden, and Morgen, where her opening note was so round it almost read as sharp. Contrasted with Baillieu’s exquisite playing, Davidsen voice never seemed to settle in the tender, quiet aesthetic of the song. To his credit, Baillieu was a constant and reliable partner to Davidsen demonstrating forceful, operatic expanse of interpretation when needed, as well as an ability to coax a sensual liquidity that, at times, transformed the piano’s sonority to more an orchestral effect.
Davidsen ended the program with playful and exuberant Heia, heia, in den Bergen ist mein Heimatland from Die Csárdásfürstin. (If anyone is paying attention at the Met, the next New Years’ Eve performance of Die Fledermaus should include Davidsen as Rosalinde.) She capped of the program with I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady which, if perhaps just a bit of fluff, read as a rather unsubtle message that Davidsen is, indeed, directly following in the footsteps of Nilsson who famously sang and recorded this aria with a resounding high C at the end. Following thunderous applause and numerous callbacks, Davidsen sang two encores which included Vissi d’arte from Tosca which, after singing such a program, was as astounding statement of the solidness of her technique, with long, spun lines and ease of production, capped with a perfectly aligned descent from Bb to the end of the aria. A most auspicious New York debut recital for Davidsen who appears, by all accounts, to be carefully mapping out a career that will no doubt, if all goes well over the next 10 years or so, lead us to new era of such roles as Brünnhilde, Isolde, and Elektra.
Opera Frankly 