“I remember thinking it was absolutely beautiful. It was while completing a bachelor’s degree at the Grieg Academy in Norway that she saw her first opera, “Der Rosenkavalier”.
Her parents were not of an artistic bent-her mother worked in health care and her father is an electrician-but she played the guitar as a teenager and sang pop, jazz and folk songs. Born in Stokke, a small town in south-eastern Norway, she is the youngest of three siblings in a family that prized athletic talent more than the musical kind. On stage, she has a regal and magnetic presence. Ms Davidsen is a statuesque six foot two inches (1.88 metres) tall. The opera world is primed for another star: Ms Davidsen’s rapid ascent coincides with the sudden descent of Anna Netrebko, the diva currently in operatic exile from most houses because of her association with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.
This summer Ms Davidsen will also appear at the Bayreuth Festival, an annual celebration of Wagner’s oeuvre in Germany, and headline the Last Night of the Proms in London. In May she will sing the part of Sieglinde in “Die Walküre”, part of Wagner’s gargantuan “Ring of the Nibelung”, at the Vienna State Opera.
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