Lise Davidsen in Recital

Lise Davidsen and Malcolm Martineau

Zellberbach Hall

Feb. 4, 2025

Photo: Katie Ravas for Drew Altizer Photography, courtesy of Cal Performances

Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen's first Bay Area appearance was last week. She was awesome. I don't just mean her gigantic voice, about which you've probably read. She is an artist and the recital was really something. As both Opera Tattler and Michael Anthonio note, she is warm and funny on stage.

Oh, yeah, she is really tall.

And pregnant, with twins. You couldn't tell in the flowing flowered dress she wore in the first half of the recital, but you could in the tubelike number in the second half. She will sing Leonore in the Met's Fidelio next month before taking a break until sometime next year. She is apparently still planning to be in the Met's Tristan und Isolde.  Between her role debut and Yuval Sharon's direction, you bet I'm planning a trip to NYC in March, 2026.

• Lisa Hirsch, SF Chronicle and SFCV. Yes, I burst into tears a measure or two into "Es gibt ein Reich," from Ariadne auf Naxos. It's time for SFO to revive this great and funny opera. Weirdly, I have a casting suggestion for them.
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle. "...the artistic results never really quicken the pulse the way one would wish — or at any rate, they don’t quicken my pulse."
• Opera Tattler. "Davidsen has a powerful voice, with beautiful low notes and pristine, completely effortless high ones." A person commenting anonymously on the post mentions bursting into tears elsewhere on the program.
• Michael Anthonio, Parterre Box. "...her take on “Tu che le vanità” completely blew my mind." (I haven't heard it sung better myself, just a stupendous vocal display.)

Last comment from me: I would have liked to hear her anywhere other than Zellerbach, which has a Meyer Sound Constellation system. This is a system that tunes the hall. I am sure that Zellerbach is acoustically dead without it - all that concrete - but even when it's set up well for the particular performance, it renders the sound a bit artificially, and that was the case last week. For more information, read Alex Ross's informative New Yorker essay about Meyer Sound from February, 2015.