Just in time for Lise Davidsen’s high-profile role debut as Lady Macbeth on Opening Night in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth, Decca Classics has released Lise Davidsen: Verdi with arias from Macbeth, Un ballo in maschera, La forza del festino, Don Carlo, and Aïda. Edward Gardner conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra and members of Apollo Voices.

There is much to admire here. The singing is powerful, confident, and secure. The phrasing is ambitiously majestic without any noticeable strain. She easily dominates the big climaxes without any sense that the mixing board is doing all the heavy lifting. Studio recordings aren’t the best medium for judging the size of a voice, but what we hear here matches my experience in the house. She easily dominates both chorus and orchestra at the climaxes in the selections from Forza. It’s quite thrilling. Her bottom range is still filling out; the lowest lying parts of “La luce langue” are pale and hollow in comparison to the rest, but I hope she has had the opportunity to focus on this in the year and a half since this was recorded.

But despite her vocalism is impressive across the recital, her interpretations are somewhat undercharacterized. In the Macbeth excerpts, the entrance aria lacks menace and ferocity; there is no sense of the joy of the beast that has finally found its opportunity to attack. The Sleepwalking Scene remains earthbound, lacking the haunted, otherworldly desperation so essential to this moment. Everything is well-practiced and carefully prepared, but not lived in. Davidsen has not yet performed this role in the opera house, where I would hope extensive rehearsal and work with coaches, a conductor, and a director would inspire more nuance in her renditions. I’m not asking or expecting a “demented” performance — even if that would sure be fun — just more emotional range. She is not helped by Edward Gardner’s conducting, which lacks atmosphere and has a certain corporate efficiency.

The selections from the other works make a similar impression with the Forza arias being the most successful overall. I assume this reflects her stage experience in the part prior to the recording. In 2021 her album “Lise Davidsen: Beethoven Wagner Verdi” appeared. It featured “Pace, pace, mio Dio!” from Forza, which is not on this disc. Still her interpretation on the earlier disc is much less compelling than what we experience on the newer one.

With that in mind, I hope we can view this as a declaration of intention; an enumeration of the Verdi roles that most interest her at this time and that she intends to master and make part of her active repertory.  All of the choices seem natural choices, even though I would like to see her eventually take on the NabuccoAbigaille or the Simon Boccanegra Amelia, though in an ideal world she would record these parts after performing all of them on stage.  Lest I be seen as too negative, I think this definitely deserves a listen (or several). There is so much exciting singing that I hope becomes the foundation of equally enthralling interpretations.