Lise Davidsen Announces Her New Album ‘Beethoven • Wagner • Verdi’

Lise Davidsen has announced she will release her second studio album, Beethoven • Wagner • Verdi, featuring some of the great operatic heroines from German and Italian repertoire, on 26 March 2021. Few young singers have received such critical acclaim as the Norwegian soprano. The New York Times announced she has, “Not just a voice. The Voice,” The Telegraph declared she has, “a voice in a million” and the Financial Times noted, “Voices like hers come around once in a generation.”

“One of the greatest vocal talents to have emerged in recent years, if not decades”

Since winning Plácido Domingo’s Operalia and Queen Sonja competitions in 2015, Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen has taken the classical music world by storm, with resounding debuts in venues such as Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Bayreuth, Aix-enProvence and Glyndebourne Festivals, Bayerische Staatsoper, Wigmore Hall and the Barbican, Wiener Staatsoper, the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall and Zurich Opera House. Her self-titled debut album of Strauss and Wagner songs, released in 2019, entered the Official UK Classical Artist Chart at No. 1 and Gramophone noted, “She is one of the greatest vocal talents to have emerged in recent years, if not decades”.

During the silence that fell upon the live music sector in 2020 Lise Davidsen had the privilege of performing select roles in Europe including Sieglinde in Wagner’s Die Walküre at Deutsche Oper Berlin in September and she was also chosen, at short notice, to perform the same role at Opera de Paris in November. Lise Davidsen also made her Met Opera virtual debut in August 2020 in a performance streamed live from Oslo’s Oscarshall, one of the King’s palaces. Further live roles in 2021 include Ariadne auf Naxos (Ariadne) with Wiener Staatsoper, Tannhäuser (Elisabeth) with Bayerische Staatsoper and Bayreuth, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Eva) with the Metropolitan Opera and she will also reprise her role as Sieglinde in Die Walküre at this year’s Bayreuth Festival.

“Once in a generation” voice

Even if the operatic world hadn’t been largely shut down by the pandemic in 2020 one performance would surely still have stood out: Lise Davidsen’s debut in the title role of Fidelio at Covent Garden. The run in March 2020 was cut short but not before she had convinced everyone again that she has a “once in a generation” voice. So it is fitting that her new album Beethoven • Wagner • Verdi opens with Leonore’s tormented aria ‘Abscheulicher!’ from Fidelio.

Lise Davidsen explained, “The one thing we knew about 2020 in advance was that it would be Beethoven year, and I was focusing so much on Leonore I just felt she had to feature here. But I wanted to give an indication of where I am heading in the future, which of course is all dictated by what I’ve done already, so there are some roles here that I’ve sung on stage but would like to revisit.”

Features some of the great operatic heroines

Davidsen, accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder on Beethoven • Wagner • Verdi, has chosen to present some of the great operatic heroines from German and Italian repertoire including Verdi’s Leonora from La Forza Del Destino, Cherubini’s Medea and Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana. Also featured on her new album is Verdi’s ‘Ave Maria’ from Otello which sets the mood for ‘Der Engel ‘(‘The Angel’) the first of Wagner’s five Wesendonck Lieder which has become a signature piece for Lise and offers a glimpse of her future Isolde.

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

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