She Risked Her Voice to Become a Mother

From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittroweth. This is The Daily on Sunday. In the world of opera, Lisa Davidson is a superstar, full stop. The Norwegian soprano has been described as one of the greatest singers of our time, with a one-in-a-million voice. This spring, she's been leading a rare, sold-out run at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City of Tristan and Isolde, a performance that's gotten rave reviews across the board. But Davidson is also at a crossroads, because nine months ago, she gave birth to twins. And that has her questioning her relationship to her career and to the world of opera. And that has her questioning her relationship to her career, her art, and her expectations for what her life should look like. Today, I talk with writer, editor, and former opera critic Zachary Wolfe about his conversation with Lisa Davidson on parenthood, vocation, and navigating the two while also making art. It's Sunday, April 5th. Zach Wolfe, welcome to the Sunday Daily. Thank you for having me. So, I quickly just want to say how very cool it is to be able to sit down with you and talk about this. I think of you as an encyclopedia of sorts of classical music. You've covered this topic for many years at The Times, and I know from many conversations with you, not just how much you know about it, but how extremely passionate you are about this world. So, thank you for being here. It's a pleasure. So, with that, as your intro, be our guide here. For those of us who aren't as tuned in to the world of opera, who is Lisa Davidson? So, when Lisa Davidson kind of burst onto the opera scene like 10 years ago, it was kind of like this comet. This is a once-in-a-generation talent. This is a person who's not only, singing beautifully, but she's singing the kind of roles that almost no one can sing, and she's singing them at a level that almost none of those people can get to. I mean, in the kind of big Wagner parts that she specializes in, she brings you back to the grid, to the greatest singers of early in the 20th century, like the kind of people you know only from recordings, but who are the best people ever to have sung these things. Was there one role that put her on the map? So, a lot of the roles she sings are Wagner, but there was also this opera by Richard Strauss called Ariadne of Naxos. And that was the opera that really kind of put her on the map. She sang this, and the buzz was immediately kind of worldwide that somebody was singing this part with kind of this plushness and opulence and richness that people had not heard in many, many years. And what is it about her voice that makes her so special? For parts like Isolde in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, which she's singing in the sold-out run of this new production at the Metropolitan Opera, you need this strength, so you need to basically be throwing these spears into the audience. But for Lisa Davidson, it's like these spears are made of this kind of soft light. I mean, so there's a sense of the strength and the power, and yet it's luminous. There's a softness. There's a beauty, this roundedness. I mean, there's people who can scream through Isolde or who can get through it, and it's pushed through, and it's not pretty necessarily. She manages to make, it's kind of like a laser, but a soft laser. It's really rare. I mean, I've never quite experienced something like it in the opera house. I can imagine that being able to produce that sound, some of it is training, right? But some of it is just like a natural gift. There is some people who are born with the kind of materials of an amazing voice, and it's very mysterious. It's all interior. There are these kind of like delicate little vocal cords, and then there's like kind of the muscles that are supporting the breath, like the diaphragm and all of that. Sounds athletic. It's exactly the same. I mean, any athlete has to train for years and years to get there, but if you don't have that natural stuff, if you're not gifted at a certain point with something, then all the training in the world is not going to get you there. And a lot is psychological because it's these like muscles that are all very internal, and therefore also like kind of requires this like immense confidence to walk into the Met, there's no microphones, 4,000 seats, and knowing that you have to sing this role that all these people have heard recordings of, the best singers in the world, and you have to match up to that. So the confidence that is required to kind of deploy this incredibly intricate physical, apparatus is pretty incredible. Okay, Zach, I want to ask this delicately. I don't mean to Timothee Chalamet this thing, but obviously we've read the coverage. The Met has been struggling. Opera has been struggling. And I'm wondering how that dynamic bears on her stardom. So when Timothee Chalamet got caught on this interview a little bit before the Oscars saying that he didn't want to be a singer, he didn't want to be a singer, he didn't want film to become like opera and ballet, basically like an increasingly niche art form, he got a lot of flack, but he was right. I mean, these institutions are struggling. Ticket sales are down. Sellouts like this Tristan and his older run are rare. And that is what makes stars like Lisa an ever more important kind of commodity. I mean, that's why the Met is, is putting so much on her. They're betting so much on her. In September, they're going to be opening their season with her. She's going to be starring when they do Wagner's four opera ring cycle in a few years. She is the star of it. So a lot of the Met's future is sort of banking on Lisa Davidson and the health of her voice. And that, I assume, is part of the reason why her decision to get pregnant was so fraught. This is something that you talked about. About with her at length. Can you just explain how she was thinking about having kids as she is rising in the opera world? Well, what she said was that my sister, she has a son. While her two siblings had sort of had children early on, for her, I mean, the gift was her voice. I felt that since I was, had the opportunity of singing and since I got this far in my career, I felt I had been given. That was, that was. That was my gift, you know. Your thing. That was my thing. What other people felt about having kids is what she felt about her voice. And for many years, I was persuaded by that and very, very happy about that. Because I think it's. That commitment to the voice was kind of fulfilling to her. Yeah, I've chosen it, of course. It's not like anyone forced me, but it's been my dream. It's been what I wanted to do. There's also this other aspect of this, which you've described, which is the athletic nature of being a singer and using your voice at this level. And so I want to ask about the potential for pregnancy to affect that. Can you just talk about how she's thinking about that? I think that she was, that was a huge part of not wanting to do this. I mean, the voice is internal and bodily and mental. It's very mysterious. Yep. So when you talk about huge hormone changes, when you talk about changes of size, when you talk about the incisions of if you have to have a C-section, every single change in the body, which has kind of been intricately tricked out to work a certain way. Yeah. Once you start messing with that, it could be disastrous and has been for some singers. I spoke a couple of years ago to a very eminent singer, this Metzler. also soprano, so a little bit lower than a soprano, for whom the process of getting pregnant and having the baby caused her to lose her voice. And it's been a slow climb back to not the same level. And so there are stories like that that really hang over all women singers who are thinking of having a baby. All right. Given all of that, the very real potential downsides of doing this, of going forward with pregnancy, what made her change her mind? Well, she met a guy named Ben, and he wanted to have kids. I was like, oh, if you want kids, you should just find someone else. You know, it's a very sort of. When did that conversation happen? Very early, I think, because we're grown-ups. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want kids, and I was like, I don't know, but if you want, you should find someone else, because I know how important it is if that's what you want. Because he said this is important. Oh, he wanted to, and he was like, no, no, it's not that important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she fell in love with him, and she was actually back in New York here singing in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, and she was singing actually the role of this woman who is first confronting the passage of time. And they were walking in Central Park. She and Ben. She and Ben were kind of walking in Central Park while she was here in New York for the rehearsals and performances. And I think just kind of thought, well, maybe I want to give this a try. It's something hard to know if it's because I met the right man and suddenly had the right support to think in that way at all, or if it's actually just. Everybody's saying, OK, it's now or never. And then suddenly when you think about it, it's like, OK, I want this. And then when we started trying, I was like, oh, but if it doesn't work, that's fine, I'm going to be fine. But I was not fine at all. At that point, she's 39 now, so she was 36 then. And so I think there was a sense of increased urgency, obviously, to if this is going to be a decision that they make, it needs to happen as soon as possible, really. And how did the trying work out? What happened? Not well at first. I mean, I think it was an incredibly difficult period. I mean, she spoke to me about two miscarriages that she had had. Oh, no. The first being in the fall of 2023, she was in Chicago to sing the title role in Janáček's Janufa, which in this terrible irony is actually about this young woman whose baby is murdered. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So I think I just felt extremely empty after that. There was nothing left. I had used all my energy and all my, everything I had, really. But the hard part was that it wasn't so easy, you know, to just say, oh, if this doesn't work, I'm fine. Because it became like an obsession. It was completely, I was like, this, now that's all I wanted. And then a few months later, sort of in the spring, in the spring of 2024, she was in Paris singing in Strauss's Zalame, which is also a very brutal and intense opera. And with that miscarriage, she didn't even miss a performance. I just pretended like nothing happened. And doing this is like this intense, intense. Yeah, it was quite, but it was the same as with many things that I do. I get very, very, very, very emotional. But then to be able to cope, I just block it out. Which I guess is quite human. I think in both of these instances, she said she told almost no one. To do my job, I have to have a very, a lot of self-confidence, you know, like to go on stage and it's important for me to, in a way, keep private life and professional life separate. But then when your private life takes up everything, it was, it was in a way good to have my job. At least I could sing, if you know what I mean. Yeah, I mean, I cannot imagine singing through such an intense experience with all of that pressure. Was she starting to get discouraged at this point? Like, did she think about doing IVF? She said that they went to a fertility doctor after this had happened to just say, OK, what are our options? And it turned out that physically, nothing seemed amiss. And I was like, I don't, I'd rather not do the IVF unless I have to, because I know these hormones affect the voice and it's extremely effective on the body. So I wanted to try the natural way as long as possible. And we continued to do that. And then he was the one who, who did the first scan. And he was like, wait, there's two. And he was. So by chance. By chance, yeah. And he was almost as happy as us because he knew that we wanted, we wanted more than one child. So it was, it was twins. Even, even without IVF, they found, they were sort of surprised to find that they had become pregnant with twins. Wow. Obviously a blessing. I can imagine she's totally ecstatic. And I am thinking about the fact that now all of those questions that she had about how pregnancy would affect her voice, her gift, are suddenly about to. to become very real. I think that she was terrified. I mean, I think you leave to do something like this with all of these bodily changes. The thought is, okay, I'm going to need to come back doing one of the hardest parts in all of opera. Everyone is going to be hanging on every note. Everyone is going to be dissecting everything that she does. So both kind of the reaction from outside and then just like, is she going to have the same voice that she has? It's like, is she going to have the same voice that she had before? Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about what happened and how giving birth actually affected Davidson's career when we return. We'll be right back. So Zach, Davidson, is in this moment, where you left us, about to give birth. And all of these issues, the excitement, the anxiety, it's all about to become very real. So let's pick it up from there. What happened? Well, so she gives birth to twins and thankfully they didn't need to do a C-section. But she had internal bleeding right after. So there was this very scary kind of medical procedure. Very scary. My husband was left there in the room with these two babies and then they just rolled me out and said, she's bleeding. And it was like, it was also one of those. I think everyone knew that this is an operation that is sort of straightforward. But for us, it felt like, yeah, I was scared I was never going to see them again. This didn't mean so. So she had taken, I think, the couple of weeks before giving birth totally off, like not even practicing, not even kind of like vocalizing. And then she said that she had taken the couple of weeks after completely off. So there was maybe like a month total in which totally no singing. Not only not performing on stage, but no singing whatsoever. And so I think that there was a sense like, okay, you're going to open your mouth at the end of this couple of weeks and like what's going to come out. And all I thought about was my voice. I was like, how is my voice going to change? What if this happens? She said that the minute she started back, she was fine. She sounded fine. The voice was fine, but my head. I think what she was not expecting was where her head was at. I mean, the emotional aspect, which was really hard. What do you mean? Tell me about that. She told me that she just felt incredibly torn about going back to singing, period. And not just leaving the house for a rehearsal, but literally going into another room, to practice, kind of wracked her with guilt. I mean, I have my practice room next to the living room, so it's not like it's hard to go, but I just didn't find the strength. It felt weird to leave them behind. Even to go to the practice room. Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to be near them all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then singing felt like such a silly thing to do. Singing felt like such a silly thing to do. Even that was really hard for her, let alone, I think, the sense of pivoting back to her career and being in the headspace to prepare this. I mean, I think she just wanted to be a mom. And why did she have to pivot back to her career so quickly? I mean, I'm not familiar with the world of opera and its maternity leave policies, but, I mean, didn't she get some time off? She got some time off, but really only a few months. And those months were going to need to be as long as possible. preparation intensive because she was going to have to start rehearsals for her first Isolde in Barcelona, which she was singing in January before coming to the Met to do it here. And so the clock was ticking. She needed to reenter the practice room. She needed to start coaching this. Because again, this wasn't a role that she had done before. This was not only something that was totally new to her, but it was one of the hardest roles in all of opera. And then when it came time, these months later, for the family to go to Barcelona to begin rehearsals, she found that leaving the hotel, leaving the apartment for rehearsal was unbearable. I cried like almost every day when I left the home, when I saw them in the break. And I felt I failed at work. I felt at home, you know, this complete, sense of lack of being enough. And the expectations were just like building and building. In the beginning, I said, I'm just, there's no point. Why should I sing when I used to love it? I can't do halfway. I can't go on stage and be like practical. Mm hmm. She was, I think, feeling like everything on both sides of the equation was really a disaster. And singing, even the process of rehearsing, wasn't giving her the fulfillment that it had before. Yeah, this thing she's describing of failing at work and failing at home. I mean, as a mom myself, I can say this is a really common experience. So how did it go for her in Barcelona? How did the performances do? Well, the reviews were all rave. And when you're in the opera world, everyone is sending around kind of bootleg tapes of people's performances. And so they began to circulate and it was completely clear that she had totally nailed it, that this was again, like kind of like an Isolde for the ages. And she told me that emotionally, she was just completely exhausted. It was familiar in the sense that it felt like, okay, I've been here before in a way. And it was very scary because it was Isolde. But it gave me very little. Unfortunately. Compared to the way that things in the past have been. It meant a little to me. To get a huge ovation or like, oh, to know that you've done something well, or be pleased, make this. Absolutely. It's been my entire goal. Is to make yourself happy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To make sure that when I left stage, I had done my best and that the best was what I planned for it to be. All I felt in Barcelona was relieved that I didn't fail. Yeah, yeah. From the outside, this was when I like the great stage. Successes of recent years, the opera world is like, whoo, breathing such a sigh of relief. So then it was heartrending to interview her and realize that when we were all so happy for her, she was going through this agony. It's not that I'm not grateful. I just have to say that. Yeah, I know what you mean. Because I'm very, very, very grateful I got to do it and that I get to be here. But to be honest, it felt. Like I was someone else. Anyway, like I was just look. I remember going to a party afterwards and everyone's like, oh, amazing, amazing. And I thought, well, yeah, cool. But it was not. It was just. You're dissociated a little. And I was completely empty. I think that was because I was so tired. I mean, I sleep very little compared to what I used to do. And emotionally, it was a big thing, the pressure, all these things. So it was like, I was just dead. Like I was just drained. And so how does she deal with that? This dual reality of everybody being dazzled and she being in agony? I think that she managed to get through the run in Barcelona, she said. And then was sort of dragged herself to New York, which was this hugely touted, like much anticipated new production, which was going to be broadcast. The broadcast to movie theaters worldwide. I mean, a Met production is a huge deal. There are not new productions of Tristan and Isolde every day. This has been mounted specifically for her. So there's a lot of pressure. And she gets to New York and I think she said things started to shift. Let's take another quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about how things changed for Davidson once she got to New York. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Okay. Davidson comes to New York for this new big production. How do things change for her? What happens? So even though she's doing the same role as she has done in Barcelona, this is a totally new production. Different director, different concept, different cast, mostly. And the director has come up with some ideas that actually are kind of interesting given what she has been going through. What do you mean? Well, the director, Yuval Sharon, decided, and this concept came about even before he knew that she was pregnant, to center the idea of kind of like pregnancy and childbirth in the opera, to basically introduce something. Introduce something that is not in Wagner's libretto to emphasize his own ideas about the piece. Okay, maybe here we should just quickly describe what this opera actually is about. So it's a complicated opera, but basically Tristan is bringing Isolde against her will to marry his uncle. And she is so angry that she plots to kill them both, that she wants to die and to kill Tristan as well. So she orders her maid to make this poison, but instead the maid switches out a love potion. Ah, classic. Classic. And so this starts off one of Wagner's favorite themes, which is this overwhelming forbidden love. And the way that this plays out, you can imagine it's not that great. Tristan is mortally wounded, and then he spends the whole third act kind of in this almost between death and life hallucination, waiting for Isolde to arise. And when she finally does, he dies, and then in this kind of ecstasy, she dies too. Except that in this production, she arrives and she's pregnant. Wow. And actually, the character through a stage double sort of gives birth, and the child is carried off at the end. But the baby stuff isn't normally in this opera, you're saying. Wagner didn't put it in there. What was the aim of the director as he put it in? What the director told me is that he wanted to take this opera, which is often about kind of like this grim endpoint of this love that is death. If you love someone this much, it can only end or be consummated in death. And make it more about these cycles of death, life, rebirth. Renewal. Exactly. Like, I mean, Wagner was very influenced by this philosopher. He was influenced by this philosopher called Schopenhauer and this idea, almost Buddhism, which was, yes, this idea of the life cycle as going on and on and on. And actually, Tristan's mother, we know from the exposition, died in childbirth. So there is this sense of mothers and birth and death, this idea of kind of the constant becoming. Right. And then there's this synchronicity of Davidsen. Davidsen having this role as she's dealing with all of these emotions and feelings and processing over her own birth and her own motherhood. And I think she also, I mean, the process of birth for her was fraught. She had had this internal bleeding. It was not an easy birth for her. And so she was very, she told me she was very wary about going in after having had this experience and needing to in some way enact it on stage. Nine months ago. It was not that long ago. And she's dying with all this blood. You know, it's, it was surprisingly close to home. And do you see that emotion play out on stage? It's incredibly moving. When she enters and is visibly pregnant and sees her dying Tristan, she actually, as she's saying farewell, she puts his hands on her belly so that, like, their farewell to each other is also a symbol of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so the way they say farewell to each other is also like this recognition that there's going to be something that continues on after his death. Tristan. When she says, Tristan, ha ervart, she holds on the belly instead. So it's this Tristan. It's like this Tristan, not interesting. Which I think is so beautiful. So the Liebestod is to. To the new baby. It's interesting. It's very beautiful and very. Yeah, I thought it was really nice. Isolde's final aria is called the Liebestod, which literally means love death. And usually it's kind of this abstract, grand aria about kind of like leaving life. And in this, because it was sort of directed toward a child, there was something that was so intimate and so fresh. It was almost like a lullaby. And begins in this small, quiet place and then goes to grandeur. So it was a staging which was kind of the best thing that you can hope for, which is to, to have a way of looking at one of these works, which opera lovers have listened to or seen so many times and to kind of experience this crucial moment in a new way. This all sounds incredibly intense. You said things had shifted for Davidson. During this production, how? Like, what was different? And did it have to do with this intensity? As hard as going back to work is, I think that she said that going to rehearsals, engaging with this character, is also a way of like anchoring yourself. I mean, finding a new kind of commitment to the work. I mean, a way of being engaged and moved by the work that you're doing. And she was saying that I think the hormones, the emotions began to calm down. Time is passing. And so that separation that was impossible in December became a few months later more bearable. Difficult, but more bearable. And are her babies with her? Like, what is her interaction with them when she's on something like this? So Ben and the kids traveled with her. And so she was living with them in New York. It is better now. I must say that I know they are fine. I know they are happy with their nanny at home and my husband. They're very pleased when I get home. She's very cute. And I just hold on and hope they will keep being happy. And of course, anything you practice, you get better at. You see what I mean? So that's also been practicing for me to like be away and then come home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder, and I don't know if you asked for this, Zach, if it's possible that part of the reason she may be more okay with being at work, less dissociated, is that this opera, this production, is in some really profound ways about motherhood. So suddenly her work is focused on the thing that she wants to spend her time thinking about. Like the two worlds have become less separate. She said that she had been really scared about this new concept, but she said that by the end it was really beautiful. And I think that being able to sort of go through that and to sort of experience on some level a mother saying goodbye to a child as well, metaphorically, but to be able to do that night after night, it was meaningful and I think cathartic for her. And I mean, allowed on some level to kind of work through is really complicated, difficult. Emotions that she had been going through. One of the things with this old istis, and especially this emotional part with her, that she's so emotional, but she has to be so strong. I think I recognize that, not just because, oh, I'm so strong enough to be so cool, but because of my job, you know, we are presented with this pages upon pages with emotions and you pour out and then suddenly afterwards, great, have a good weekend. Back to life, which is a joy. And it's a gift to be able to work with that. But it's also, yeah, it's healing and it's tiring. Yeah, it's challenging. I mean, it's definitely, the boundaries are. But I like that that's possible. Yeah. Zach, from what you've described, this whole journey for Davidson seems to have really been about the struggle internally over whether it's possible for her to be as committed to her, her job, and in this case, her art, while being as committed to parenthood as she wants to be. And I'm wondering, where do you think she has landed on that question? As a parent myself, I can say the idea of landing anywhere permanently is sort of a euphemistic thought. You're kind of constantly updating and changing that stasis point, but where is she at right now? She said she's not sure. She said that she, and her husband, are going to take time this summer to really think about her future and think about the way she wants her schedule to be and the way that she wants the travel to be. When you're an opera singer, you are traveling and performing constantly. It's really not this grounded thing. This isn't like a normal nine-to-five job. She's, I mean, she's living in another universe. Completely. And it's hard enough when it's just you. And so to really need to be, taking care of baby twins as well, it's a huge thing. And I think she really wants to think about the future in a way that kind of takes into account her new family. So it's funny. I mean, the opera world is now going to be watching her in the same way that they were watching her in terms of when she was pregnant, in terms of, we're counting on you. What is going to happen? Are you going to still be wanting to sing all over the place at the highest level for 10 years? 10 or 20 more years? Or might she really want to ramp down a lot? I mean, she is scheduled to sing the starring role, as I said, in Wagner's Ring Cycle at the Met and elsewhere. Another role that, like Isolde, is one of those things that if you love opera, you're like, this is the role that she was born to sing. And so everyone is waiting for that. But then she could decide, I'm not, I don't want to do it. Obviously, I think what she's going through, mothers, parents in general, will immediately relate to. But I actually think anyone who has gone through a profound change in their life will recognize it. You know, having a kid, experiencing loss, these life-changing moments where you just aren't who you used to be all of a sudden, the things that used to be important to you aren't anymore. Your focus has changed in ways that are impossible to ignore. That forces you to react, automate to the world, to your career, to everything, to totally readjust. And I think she totally recognizes that she does what she does on a level that is a gift. And yet, I think she can't ignore that her emotional world is totally different. She said, I've changed. This is not the person that I was before. The voice has not changed, but I am a different person. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Well, Zach, thank you so much. Lisa Davidson concluded her run of Tristan and Isolde last night. She's scheduled to open the Mets fall season in September as the lead in Verdi's Macbeth. Today's episode was produced by Tina, with help from Luke Van Der Ploeg. It was edited by Wendy Doerr, with help from Michael Benoit. Our production manager is Franny Carr-Toth. It contains music by Dan Powell and Diane Wong and was engineered by Sophia Landman. That's it for The Daily on Sunday. I'm Natalie Ketroef. See you tomorrow. ♪ Thank you.