More Than a Symbol

Opera is often a long game. Voices take time to mature (which is why so many 40-something singers play teenage lovers). Singers also face pressure to commit to a career early on in order to get into the right schools and study with the right teachers. The economics of an opera house or major recording label often leave excellent voices plugging away at their craft in regional houses and small-but-scrappy labels until the full package comes together.

Which is why fans love a story like Lise Davidsen’s: Born in Stokke, Norway (a city with a population of just over 11,000) to a healthcare professional mother and an electrician father, Davidsen didn’t see her first opera (“Der Rosenkavalier”) until she was 20. Until then, she preferred to sing Eva Cassidy and Bonnie Raitt. She initially studied Baroque choral singing as a mezzo-soprano before pursuing a master’s in Copenhagen, where her teacher informed her she was a soprano who belonged in opera. In 2015, she was catapulted onto the international stage after winning back-to-back at the Queen Sonja and Operalia competitions. Peter Gelb called her “the vocal flagship of the Met in the decades to come” and told NPR earlier this year, “She basically has the key to the Met.”

Recently, Davidsen returned to the Bayreuth Festival, both for the company’s new “Ring” Cycle (in which she sang Sieglinde) and a revival of Tobias Kratzer’s meta-production of “Tannhäuser,” which casts the title role as a Wagnerian heldentenor torn between a career in opera with his costar (Elisabeth) and life on the fringes of society with a fiery activist (Venus). Kratzer’s staging, which includes live videography from backstage, presents Davidsen’s Elisabeth as a character overwhelmed by emotions, but also attempting to take control of her own life. Rather than fainting into her death at the end, she kills herself in a highly visual and visceral manner. It casts an uncomfortable but necessary shadow over the idea of “Heilige Kunst,” or holy art. 

I met with Davidsen the afternoon following her third performance of “Tannhäuser” at Bayreuth’s Wagner Museum. We both thought it would be a great way to escape the heat waves that gripped Germany this summer. We both forgot that the best place to get recognized by fans in Bayreuth would be at the Wagner Museum.