Verdi (Opera Arias)

A Norwegian Singing the Most Italian Music on Earth

Lise Davidsen is Norwegian. Norway brings to mind fjords, fir trees, Ibsen — nothing at all to do with Verdi’s boiling Italian blood.

She made her name on “northern” repertoire: Wagner’s Sieglinde, Senta, and Elisabeth, Strauss’s Salome and Ariadne. Roles demanding a voice like a glacier — enormous, pure, impassive.

Then in 2023 she sang Elisabeth of Valois in Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, and the whole house sat stunned: this Norwegian Valkyrie sings Verdi more Italian than the Italians?

This Decca album, released September 11, is her answer to the world: her first recording devoted entirely to Verdi.

Five Women, Five Heartbreaks

The album isn’t really a “greatest Verdi hits” compilation. Its true subject is five women.

Fifteen tracks from five operas, ordered by Verdi’s own chronology: Lady Macbeth of Macbeth — ambition burns her to ash; Amelia of Un ballo in maschera — trembling between love and guilt; Leonora of La forza del destino — a lifetime atoning for a sin she never committed; Elisabeth of Don Carlo — dignity as her only armor; Aida of Aida — torn in half between homeland and lover.

The sessions took place in January 2025 at London’s Henry Wood Hall, produced by John Fraser — sixty-seven minutes and fifty-two seconds.

Lady Macbeth: The Psychology of Darkness

The five Macbeth excerpts form the album’s center of gravity — no surprise, since a week after release Davidsen debuts as Lady Macbeth at the Metropolitan Opera, opening the entire 2026/27 season.

In “La luce langue” she sounds like she’s negotiating with her own shadow; in the sleepwalking scene “Una macchia,” the voice washes itself whiter and whiter until nothing remains. That’s not madness — that’s a person watching her own soul leak out drop by drop.

If you know her Wagner, you’ll notice something curious: singing Verdi, Davidsen’s voice gets smaller — but the drama gets bigger. Once the Nordic glacier melts, there’s a Mediterranean underneath.

Gardner: The Man Who Understands Her Best

Edward Gardner and Davidsen go way back — this blog has already covered their Der fliegende Holländer (Decca 4870952): Davidsen as Senta, Gardner conducting. Same team.

Gardner took over the LPO in 2021 and added the Norwegian National Opera directorship in 2024. An Englishman running a Norwegian opera house; a Norwegian singing Italian opera — the two of them picked up the wrong scripts and perform them brilliantly.

The LPO strings sound un-English warm on this disc. In “Morro, ma prima in grazia” — Amelia’s farewell to her son — Gardner pulls the orchestra back to nearly nothing, leaving Davidsen alone at the cliff’s edge.

Why Now

Met general manager Peter Gelb calls Davidsen “in a league of her own”; after her Barcelona Isolde debut, The Observer’s Fiona Maddocks asked whether she might be “the soprano of the century.”

At the 2027 Salzburg Easter Festival she debuts Brünnhilde in Die Walküre with Petrenko. Wagner not abandoned, Verdi newly conquered — is this Norwegian planning to sing the entire nineteenth century?

Apparently so. And we’re lucky to be living through her years of conquest.