‘Everyone at the training could say: I’m a soprano, I’m a tenor, but I was nothing for a while’

Becoming a singer-songwriter, just like Joni Mitchell, seemed like something to Lise Davidsen. But then again, such a glorious future, for a 15-year-old girl from Stokke, a Norwegian village an hour and a half by train from Oslo, with a mother who works in health care and an electrician for a father – she didn’t see it happening.

But look how Lise Davidsen (35) is now. She zooms from a chic hotel in Vienna, the music city where she was on stage the night before. Not with a guitar, but in the opera. In Benjamin Britten’s fishing drama Peter Grimes she shared the stage with two prize-winning opera professionals: the tenor Jonas Kaufmann and the bass-baritone Bryn Terfel. “I still squeeze my arm at times like this,” she says.

For now, she can keep squeezing, the soprano who is causing a worldwide furore as a voice prodigy. All opera houses want her. After Vienna, two months follow at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In May she returns to Europe, where she slaloms between gold jobs in London, Paris and Berlin.

Worker’s child conquers elite genre: it surprised Lise Davidsen herself. ‘Until after I was 20 I assumed that music would remain a hobby. Without professional musicians in your area, you don’t quickly realize that you might be able to earn your money with it. I knew that I liked singing since the solos I was allowed to do in a Christmas musical in primary school. I was also lucky with the subsidized music school in Stokke. The combination of singing and guitar lessons was cheap, otherwise my parents would never have been able to afford it.’

A voice out of millions, a legend in the making. Hearing Lise Davidsen sing, he quickly reaches for big words. She has an exceptional range, from low to high and from soft to loud. Technique doesn’t seem to count. The radiant sound can be colored in all directions. Also de Volkskrant recently praised her recent CD with songs by compatriot Edvard Grieg. ‘Full fat voice’, ‘delicate suppleness’, five stars.

Identity Crisis

In high school she chose music as a specialization. Maybe she could go to the conservatory, but Davidsen shied away. She probably wasn’t good enough. In Oslo she was indeed rejected. In Bergen she was put on the waiting list. Once she was in the first year, she enjoyed it to the fullest. ‘As a mezzo-soprano I specialized in baroque music. I sang in passions of Bach and the Messiah from Handel. From the second year I participated in Det Norske Solistkor, a professional chamber choir.’

Slowly the mezzo-soprano who could also handle alto parts saw a future dawn: that of a baroque singer. That vision shattered after she registered for the master’s degree in opera in Copenhagen. Her teacher listened and said: you are not a mezzo, you are a soprano. And your future is not in the baroque, but in the great romantic opera. ‘Had I just found my niche, I could start over. Everyone at the training could say: I’m a soprano, I’m a tenor, but I was nothing for a while. It felt like an identity crisis.’

She had to learn another voice trade, opera experts speak of the jugendlich-dramatic Sopran† The youthfulness of such a voice is in color and character, the dramatic in the power. It is ideal material for the heroines of Verdi, Wagner and Strauss. Step by step, Davidsen captured her new sound, initially disoriented, as a striker being retrained as a central defender. ‘It took until I was 24 before I thought: this suits me, I’m going to fight for this. If I can make this my profession, I’ll sign at the cross.’

Vote with a capital S

She graduated and won competition after competition. 2015 was the year of the breakthrough. Davidsen took the top prize of Operalia, the singing competition that takes place under the auspices of the Spanish star tenor Plácido Domingo. She received the press and audience award at the Belvedere Singing Competition in Amsterdam. She made beautiful debuts, with a Strausso opera at the Glyndebourne and Wagners festival. Ring of the Nibelung at the London Opera House Covent Garden.

Fixed spot in reviews: Lise Davidsen has no voice, but a Voice. “Don’t ask me to describe him,” she says. ‘It is part of my body and not in a display case in front of me. But I know how it works, maintain it well and live a healthy life. That is difficult enough in corona time. I study, sport, rest, perform, take a walk and return to the hotel. The motto is not to get sick, the social aspect too often falls short.’

Her father and mother visit regularly. ‘Of course they are proud, they enjoy my success. But some aspects of my world they will never understand. The concentration that an opera career requires, both physically and mentally, perpetual studying, role after role, even during holidays, you may only understand that if you are in the profession yourself.’