Lise Davidsen presents second studio recording 'Beethoven - Wagner - Verdi'

Few young singers merit the superlatives bestowed on them as “powerhouse” (Guardian) Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen. The award-winner releases her second studio album on 26th March 2021 with Decca Classics, the label that launched her self-titled debut in 2019 to universal praise.

In amongst the silence that fell upon the live music sector in 2020, Davidsen had the privilege of performing select roles in Europe, not least a highly-anticipated house and role debut at Deutsche Oper Berlin in September, singing the role of Sieglinde in Wagner’s Die Walküre. She was also chosen at short notice to perform the same role at Opera de Paris in November, marking her house debut.

In-keeping with a shift towards filmed performance content, Davidsen made her Met Opera virtual debut in August 2020, in a performance streamed live from Oslo’s Oscarshall, one of the King’s palaces. 2021 offers not only a new album, but further live roles including Ariadne auf Naxos (Ariadne) with Wiener Staatsoper, Tannhäuser (Elisabeth) with Bayerische Staatsoper and Bayreuth, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Eva) with the Metropolitan Opera. Davidsen will also reprise her role as Sieglinde in Die Walküre at this year’s Bayreuth Festival.

Beethoven • Wagner • Verdi opens with Leonore’s tormented aria ‘Abscheulicher!’ from Fidelio, Beethoven’s only opera, a role which Davidsen played to great acclaim in 2020: “Davidsen, more than fulfilling the high expectations placed on her, makes a phenomenal Leonore.” (Guardian)

Davidsen has chosen to present some of the great operatic heroines from German and Italian repertoire: Verdi’s Leonora from La forza del destino; Cherubini’s Medea, reprising her 2017 Wexford debut and Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana revealing a flair for verismo. Verdi’s Ave Maria from Otello provides the perfect mood-setting for Der Engel (‘The Angel’) the first of Wagner’s five Wesendonck Lieder which has become a signature piece for Lise and which affords us a glimpse of her future Isolde.

Recorded in London during the summer and autumn of 2020, Davidsen is accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder on this hotly-anticipated new record offering listeners an audience with “one of the greatest vocal talents to have emerged in recent years, if not decades” (Gramophone).

*The New Yorker, Dec 2019

Lise Davidsen’s album Beethoven • Wagner • Verdi will be released on 26th March 2021 and can be pre-ordered here.