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.
1 comment:
My fellow weeper! What’s interesting is that Davidsen doesn’t necessarily provide the “outward” emotive cues associated with musical tear-induction—the downcast eyes, the “I offer my heart to you” hands, the plaintive phrasing. Perhaps this is the aspect that kept Joshua Kosman at some remove. And yet, I think it’s the very dignity—the radiance, even serenity, in extremis—that I found surprisingly moving.
It’s a testament to her artistry, rather than just her instrument, that I liked the lieder even more than the arias. I felt that the piano couldn’t stand in for an orchestra in full flight, as needed to match her in the arias, but Martineau (the best accompanist in the business) provided enough density for the more intimate songs. The programming was, by her admission, a grab bag, but I thought that so many smart connections, both textual and thematic, arose from her choices. For example, both of the Strauss selections center on “freeing”—the title concept in the song, of course, but also the most important, arcing passage in “Es gibt en reich”—“Du wirst mich befreien.”
I’m also thinking about booking a trip for the Met Tristan. Davidsen’s Liebestod itself is a work in progress (it needed uncanniness and ecstasy instead of “just” excellent singing), but I don’t think that SF Opera can afford her, so I doubt we’ll get her anytime soon on this coast. (I said this out loud before a Schwabacher recital last year, and my neighbor had to inform me that I was sitting right behind Matthew Shilvock…)
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