A Norwegian phenomenon
Buzzing furiously round the opera business at the moment is the name of Lise Davidsen. This 30-yearold Norwegian soprano will make her British stage debut at Glyndebourne this summer in the title role of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, and even in rehearsal hard-bitten old-timers are being blown away by the majesty of her oceanically huge but richly beautiful voice – a phenomenon that has drawn comparisons with her compatriot Kirsten Flagstad.
Although she cuts an impressively tall and strapping figure, Davidsen seems modestly embarrassed at the attention that she is attracting. Shy, warm and unpretentious, she hails from a small town south of Oslo where the main interest was the national sport of handball. Classical music didn’t mean anything to her as a teenager: she sang in school choirs and strummed the guitar with vague ambitions to be a singersongwriter in the Joni Mitchell mould, but she was amazed when teachers spotted a talent of which she was quite unaware and began to draw out its potential.
For most of her student life, she admits that she was “scared of opera – it took me a long time mentally to realise what I could do with it”, but after her victories in several prestigious competitions – notably Plácido Domingo’s Operalia in 2015 – she is now firmly on course for stardom.
Her debut recital at the Wigmore Hall last month was described by one critic as “awesome”. After Glyndebourne, she arrives to the BBC Proms with Sibelius’s cantata Luonnotar. In the autumn, she sings the title role in a new production of Cherubini’s Medea at the Wexford Festival directed by Fiona Shaw, and in 2018 and 2019 she is booked into Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper and the Met.
Yet she remains cautious and feels that she still has everything to prove. “I don’t want to burn out early,” she says. “I know I’m still developing. I want to sing for as long as I can – and also try to lead as normal a life as possible.”
At Glyndebourne, she’s been enjoying a summercamp atmosphere that gives her the chance “to calm down after a crazy time in the chaos of Buenos Aires” and, once the Ariadne performances are up and running, she’s looking forward to a few days of English sightseeing with her boyfriend. She had better make the most of it – blessed with a superhuman voice like hers, normal life won’t be on tap much longer.