The Liceu brings together in a recital today (7:30 p.m.) two of the greatest hopes of opera, two names that will be talked about in the coming decades. At least Lise Davidsen's. Last season, the multi-award-winning Norwegian soprano left the Gran Teatre audience enraptured with her powerful voice, so suitable for Wagner. In that debut she sang her first Puccini song, Il trittico, which in a place as Wagnerian as Barcelona's did nothing but fuel the desire to hear her in roles like Sieglinde (in June).
Together with her, the Italian-British tenor Freddie De Tommaso will take the stage on La Rambla today, who, like his colleague, made his debut at the Peralada Festival in a church in Carmen that felt, in both cases, how its walls trembled.
This recital was going to be his high school debut for him. However, his great service to the operatic cause by replacing Carmen's Don José, Michael Spyres, in extremis did not exactly go unnoticed last Monday. Finding himself rehearsing Un ballo in maschera, the next title of the season, De Tommaso agreed to resolve the issue, and he did so in such a way that the show seemed to receive an upgrade.
The emergence of this tenor into the musical firmament represents the umpteenth attempt to find a successor to the already mature Roberto Alagna or Jonas Kaufmann. And although his future projection remains to be seen, in 2024 he could confirm his worth.
James Baillieu will sit at the piano in an evening in which Davidsen and De Tommaso will be able to demonstrate their versatility: after a first part with arias by Wagner, Verdi and verista composers, they will offer Neapolitan songs, 19th century songs and stellar moments from the musical and the operetta (Tchaikovsky, Tosti, R. Strauss, Léhar...).
