Soprano Lise Davidsen to release new opera recording

“Davidsen Goes out with a Bang,” read the headline in Broadway World’s review of the Metropolitan Opera revival of Beethoven’s “Fidelio.” And indeed Lise Davidsen is in a sense “going out.” After she gives her final performance as the wife who disguises herself as a man to save her husband, she’ll head home to Norway to prepare for a new role — as the mother of twins. But the soprano’s fans will also have something new to savour while she’s on maternity leave. Decca is releasing a recording of Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer” (“The Flying Dutchman”), an opera she had never sung before and may never do again.

The role of Senta, the sea captain’s daughter who is obsessed with rescuing the Dutchman from eternal damnation, is one that Davidsen said she had been “asked to do for almost 10 years,” but always turned down because “I didn’t feel ready.” That might seem surprising since the role is relatively short and is often grouped with other Wagnerian roles she has already sung, like Elisabeth in “Tannhäuser” or Sieglinde in “Die Walküre.”

But the tessitura of the role — the amount of time the voice spends in a particular range — “was difficult for me six or seven years ago,” she said. “It lies in a tricky place and is surprisingly dramatic in the high range. For me, it was a little bit too high for too long a time.”

What changed her mind, she said, was mastering the title role of Richard Strauss’s “Salome,” another opera that requires the soprano to sing near the top of her range much of the time. She performed that to great acclaim last year at the Paris Opera. Added incentives to record Senta came from the team Decca assembled and the fact that it was taped in two live performances at the Oslo Opera House. Edward Gardner, music director of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, was the conductor, and the role of the Dutchman was sung by baritone Gerald Finley, a singer she has long admired.

In their great second-act duet, Davidsen said that when Finley sang his opening phrases in an otherworldly hush, “It just gave me goosebumps because his sound is so beautiful. It’s so inspiring and clear. “I wanted to take his voice and put it in my pocket and have it with me for a sad day.”

Davidsen matches him, scaling back her enormous voice to sing with aching purity, then unleashing a torrent of sound for the climaxes. The recording, also featuring bass Brindley Sharratt as Senta’s father Daland, and tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac as her hapless suitor Erik, will be released April 18. Now that the project is behind her she said she has no plans to sing the role on stage.

“I can never say never,” she said, “and maybe in five years something changes. But for now there’s a lot of other roles I have coming.”

Chief among those are the two pinnacles of the Wagnerian repertory for dramatic soprano, Isolde in “Tristan und Isolde,” and Brünnhilde in the “Ring” cycle. Both have been announced for upcoming productions at the Met directed by Yuval Sharon with the Isolde in just a year from now.

In addition she is determined to keep exploring the Italian repertory. Already she has scored success in two major Verdi roles: Elisabetta in “Don Carlo” and Leonora in “La Forza del Destino.” A very different Verdi role she’s eager to add is the murderous Lady Macbeth in “Macbeth.” She will open the Met’s 2026-27 season in a new production of the work. “I just love that woman,” she said. “There’s something so loco in her, and I’m anxious to see where I can go with it. The other ladies are pure, but she’s on a different planet.”

Davidsen’s twins are due in June, and she plans to extend her leave from singing for the rest of 2025. “In America they think that’s a very long leave,” she said, “but back home they think it’s very short.”

Associated Press