Recital de Lise Davidsen y Freddie De Tommaso ?????
Place and date: Gran Teatre del Liceu (1/11/2024)
Audience eager to enjoy a recital that generated more expectations than memorable results. Great voices are not always great voices. The power of Lise Davidsen’s instrument is beyond dispute, due to volume and timbral quality, but her stylistic adaptation to the Italian repertoire raised doubts. She lacked that characteristic so recognizable by fans and so valued in a theater with a tradition of voices: Italianità.
The accents, the phrasing, the colors, the style linked to the technique and the passion that Verdi or Puccini need and breathe and that Davidsen, with his extraordinary gifts, failed to convey, were missing. She did not flow like Amelia del Ballo in maschera, icy and distant, nor in the paradigmatic duet “Teco io sto” of this same opera, without chemistry with De Tommaso.
Davidsen brought feeling and elegance to the Ave Maria of Verdi’s Otello, but it seemed like the timid whisper of a Valkyrie searching for her Walhalla. The same with Tosca’s “Vissi d’arte”, spectacular means but brief expressive result.
In the second part, Tchaikovsky’s romantic explosion was better suited to his instrument, due to its colors and pastiness. And yet, with Strauss’s lieder, suddenly the voice emerged and merged with the notes and the language like a glove. The twilight decadence of that repertoire found its stylistic horizon in Davidsen’s vocal sun. There was a Befreit to remember. Her final solo My Fair Lady was a beautiful eccentricity.
De Tommaso, for his part, demonstrated his singing talent thanks to a pulpy tessitura, generous in harmonics and full and spectacular trebles. However, his desire to demonstrate mythical Italian references like Bergonzi or Pavarotti hides a personality still in formation. He has all the ingredients to be an era-defining tenor, but he needs to polish nuances, colors and expression. He improved with the Tosti, remarkable L’ alba sepa della luz l’ ombra, and in an artificial Core ‘ngrato. He is eagerly awaited at the Ballo del Liceu, perhaps on stage his personality will emerge and be glimpsed.
Impeccable correction by pianist James Baillieu, who stood out with the chamber and lied repertoire.
