Lise Davidsen: Verdi album review

At some point, any star soprano worth her salt will try her hand at a Verdi album. Lise Davidsen avoids the fate of those who attempt to encompass the composer’s entire cast of leading ladies, focusing instead on five who fit her vocal talents like a glove.

She opens with a commanding Lady Macbeth, her coloratura clean as a whistle and with gleaming, seemingly effortless top notes. Edward Gardner’s buoyant yet spacious way with the orchestral accompaniment affords Davidsen sufficient elbow room to create a more thoughtful schemer than is sometimes the case, culminating in a seamless sleepwalking scene where her breath control alone deserves a Grammy.

For every kilowatt of power, she seeks out – and on the whole finds – moments of contrasting vulnerability (though none of Davidsen’s women are exactly shrinking violets). It’s most evident in the aria from Un Ballo in Maschera where Amelia pleads to see her child one last time. It’s there, too, in Elisabeth’s fatalistic Tu Che le Vanità from Don Carlo, but it can also be found in the darker recesses of Lady Macbeth’s La Luce Langue. Throughout, the London Philharmonic Orchestra prepares the detailed canvases for Davidsen’s striking portraits.

There’s vocal beauty as Elisabeth comforts her dismissed lady-in-waiting and radiant stillness as Leonora raises her voice in prayer in La Forza del Destino. She’s at her most involving, though, in Amelia’s “gallows field” monologue from Ballo, and grappling with public versus private emotions in Aida’s Ritorna Vincitor!

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