Taylor Swift is not the one singer followers are flocking to Paris to listen to.
Lise Davidsen has change into classical music’s greatest draw, attracting crowds to the Paris Opéra for her first performances within the title position of Strauss’ “Salome” throughout the identical week Swift crammed La Défense Arena throughout city for the beginning of her Eras Tour’s European leg.
“It’s a voice of the century,” stated American director Lydia Steier, who staged the sex-and-alcohol-fueled “Salome” on the Bastille. “It’s an insane intensity acoustically. I think its electric.”
Andreas Homoki, director basic of the Zurich Opera, gave Davidsen her first main position in 2016 as Agathe in Weber’s “Der Freischütz.”
“Somebody said she’s the new Nina Stemme. I disagree. She’s the new Nilsson,” he stated in a comparability with Birgit Nilsson, considered one of many biggest Wagnerian sopranos of the twentieth century.
Davidsen is within the midst of a landmark season that included her first staged performances within the title position of Janáček’s “Jenůfa” in Chicago final November and her position debut as Leonora within the Metropolitan Opera’s new manufacturing of Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” in February. She climbed one other massive step within the ladder of the main dramatic soprano repertoire together with her Salome debut Thursday.
“I feel very, very lucky that I have this job and that I get to do this as a career,” she stated. “It’s an unbelievably privileged job, but it’s also an unbelievably hard job. I think it’s important to remember that it’s a gift to be able to do this because in the hard days, I wonder if I should just quit and never sing again. But then when you get to the end of a run or end of a show even or a good rehearsal, you think what a gift it is to do this.”
Davidsen begins this “Salome” in a again room of the brutalist set the place Herod’s orgy is happening, sporting a white raincoat, her black hair stringy in a Goth look. She wanders onto a staircase as three attendants in yellow hazmat fits get rid of our bodies.
Steier replaces the dance of the seven veils with a gang rape. In one other iconic scene, a Salome physique double holds the severed head of Jochanaan (John the Baptist), whereas Davidsen sings the ultimate portion of her 15-minute solo in a cage. She’s with Johan Reuter, who portrayed Jochanaan, and so they rise towards the rafters in an obvious hallucination earlier than Herod orders her dying.
The viewers whooped after the ultimate notice of Sunday’s matinee, the second of seven performances by means of May 28.
“She makes it sound easy. She makes it sound effortless,” conductor Mark Wigglesworth stated of her voice. “It’s big, but she never shouts. It’s got a beauty to it. That means you’re not conscious of quantity, you’re just focused on the quality.”
Davidsen referred to as Steier’s controversial staging “unbelievably new and modern.”
“As lengthy because it is sensible, so long as there may be motive, I actually get pleasure from doing it,” she stated.
At the Met on Feb. 26, Davidsen was so overwhelmed by the viewers response after her massive fourth-act aria, “Pace, pace, mio dio!” that she broke character, bowing her head and placing a hand over her coronary heart.
“Relief that it went well and I was happy about it,” she defined a number of days later.
Davidsen has been residence of late just for temporary stretches between singing engagements. She and her fiance have a home in London and are constructing one in Norway.
On the times of performances, Davidsen has a secular routine that features walks, laundry, naps and yoga. She will get to the opera home about 2 1/2 hours earlier than curtain to heat up and go for hair and make-up.
Nervous power on opening nights doesn’t dissipate till the wee hours.
“I pass out in a way rather than sort of fall asleep properly,” she stated.
Now 37, the 6-foot-2 Norwegian debuted on the Vienna State Opera in 2017 within the title position of Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos,” at London’s Royal Opera in 2018 as Freia in Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” on the Bayreuth Festival in 2019 as Elisabeth in Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” and on the Met in 2019 as Lisa in Tchaikovsky’s “Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades).”
Even with a string of accolades, Davidsen approaches every position with trepidation.
“Am I good enough?” she stated. “It surprises me every time how nervous I get.”
She is to sing Act 2 of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” for the primary time in live performance with conductor Simon Rattle and tenor Stuart Skelton with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in live performance on Nov. 1 and three in Munich, then sings “Tosca” on the Met beginning Nov. 12 and Leonore in Beethoven’s “Fidelio” there opening on March 4.
“I actually wished to do the ‘Fidelio’ right here and, in fact, after I was requested to do ‘Tosca’ that was a really clear sure for me,” she stated in New York earlier than heading to Europe.
Opera aficionados await her first full Isolde and Brünnhilde,
“The Verdi has now been a very big thing for me to get to do ‘Don Carlo’ and then ’Forza’ and I would like to do a ‘Un Ballo in Maschera,'” she said. “And then of course Tosca, it’s a really big thing for me next season. And then ever further away, maybe the bigger Wagner roles. I hope that the Verdi, Puccini, Strauss world can be my plan for some more years.”
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