She Risked Her Voice to Become a Mother

reporter who's watched with a lot of alarm as our profession has shrunk in recent years.

Normally, this is why I'd ask you to subscribe to The Times. But today, I'm encouraging you to support any news organization that's dedicated to original reporting. Whether that's

“your local newspaper, a national paper, or The New York Times, what matters most is that”

you subscribe to a real news organization doing firsthand fact-based reporting. And if you already do, thank you. From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroff. This is The Daily On Sunday. In the world of opera, Lisa Dovinson is a superstar, full stop. In our region's soprano, has been described as one of the greatest singers of our time,

with a one-and-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 Isolda, a performance that's gotten re-reviews across the board. But Dovinson is also at a crossroads, because nine months ago, she gave birth to twins. 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 Wolff about his conversation

with Lisa Dovinson on parenthood, vocation, and navigating the two while also making art.

It's Sunday, April 5th. Zach Wolff, 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. So, pleasure. So, with that, as your intro, be our guide here. For those of us who aren't as tuned into the world of opera, who is Lisa Dovinson? So, when Lisa Dovinson 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 greatest singers of like early in the 20th century, like the kind of

people you know only from recordings, but who are like the best people ever to have sung these things. Was there one role that put her on the map? So, like a lot of the roles she sings are Wagner, but there was also this opera by Rickard Strauss called Ariadne of Noxos. 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 Isolda Invogner's Tristan and Isolda, 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 Dovetson, 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,

I mean, there's people who can scream through Isolda 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 could 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

Timothy Shalame 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 start-up. So when Timothy Shalame got caught on this interview a little bit before the Oscars saying that 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 and ever more important kind of commodity. I mean, that's why the met 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 rings 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 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, I had the opportunity of singing and since I got this far in my career, I felt I had been given. That was, that was my gift, you know. Your thing. That was my thing.

It was 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 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, that was a huge part of not wanting to do this. I mean, the voice is internal and bodily and mysterious. Yep. So when you talk about huge hormone changes,

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 mezzo 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? I'm very early. I think because we're grown off.

Yeah. Yeah. You want kids and us like, "I don't know, but if you want to use you to 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, he's like, "No, no, he's not that important." Yeah. Yeah. But she fell in love with him, and she was actually back in New York. You're singing in

Strauss's "Darosen Cavalier." 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 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'm at the right man and suddenly had the right support to think in that way at all. Or if it's actually just the body saying,

"Okay, it's now and ever and suddenly when you think about it, it's like, "Okay, 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.

“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 Yana-Chex Yanufa, which in this terrible irony is actually about this young woman who's baby is murdered. 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 to just say, "Oh, if this doesn't work, I'm fine." Because it became 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 of 2024, she was in Paris singing in Strauss's Xalame, which is also a very brutal and intense opera, and with that miscarriage, she didn't even miss her performance. I just ended up like this is just cring happening. And doing this is like this intense. 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 look 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, um, a lot of self confidence. You know, like, it took a good one stage and it's important for me to, in a way keep private life and professional life separates. But then when you're private life takes up everything, it was, it was in a way good to have my job, at least I could sing if I could. Yeah, I mean, I cannot imagine singing

at this point? Like, did she think about doing IVF? She said that they went to a fertility doctor after, as it happens to just say, okay, what are options? And it turned out that physically nothing seems a miss. And I was like, I don't, I rather not do the IVF unless I have to because I know this hormones affects the voice and it's extremely effective on the body. So I wanted to try the natural way as long as possible and we continue to do that and then he was to one who did the

first scan and things like, wait, there's two. So I could, but by chance, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it was almost as heavy as us because in you that we wanted, we wanted more than one chance. And it was thanks. Even even without IVF, 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 become very real.

“I think that she was terrified. I mean, I think you leave to do something like this with all”

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 had before. Let's take a quick break and we'll talk about what happened and how giving birth actually affected Davance's career when we return. We'll be right back. I'm Kevin Rus. I'm Casey Newton and we're the host of Hard Fork, a show from the New York

Times about technology and the future. That's right Kevin, each week we come to you from the front lines of tech giving you interviews with big newsmakers doing hands on experiments and talking about the week that was. We're out here in San Francisco where the cars drive themselves and the code writes itself and we are here to tell you about the future that is coming to wherever you are. Very soon. That's right. At least until the podcast starts recording itself at which point

“you and I are out of love Rus. We think that every Friday for about an hour you should have a good”

time. Coming out with your Paris Social Friends, Casey and Kevin and you might learn something. You'll hear a great conversation and you'll be able to sound smart when you head into your workplace meeting on Monday morning. You can listen to Hard Fork wherever you get your podcasts or watch us on [email protected]/hardfork. So Zach, Davidson is in this moment where you love 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 sea 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. He was like, sorry, he 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, yeah, I was scared. I was never going to see them again this to do it.

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 at all. 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 the 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 happened? She said that the minute she started back, she was fine. She sounded fine. I think what she was not expecting was where her head was at. I mean, the emotional

incredibly torn about going back to singing period and not just leaving the house for her

soul, but literally going into another room to practice, kind of racked her with guilt. I mean, I have my practice room like next to living with you. So there'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 into the practice room. Yeah, yeah. 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 that those months were going to need to be preparation intensive because she was going to

have to start rehearsals for her first Zelda in Barcelona, which she was singing in January before

coming to the net 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, to 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 almost every day when I left the home and when I saw them in the break.

And I felt I failed that work. I felt that home, you know, this completely 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 think that's, I come to half ways. You know, I'm not a Congo station, be like a practical.

“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 raves. And when you're in the upper world, everyone is sending around kind of bootleg tapes of people's performances. And so they began to

know that. Circulate and it was completely clear that she had totally nailed it that this was again, like kind of like an asolder for the ages. But she told me that emotionally, she was just completely exhausted. It was familiar in the sense that if I'd like to have been here before in a way, and it was very scary because it was his older, 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, please, make it. Absolutely, it's been my entire goal. It's to make yourself happy. Yeah, yeah. To make sure that when I left stage, I had done my best and that the best was what I'd planned for it to be. All I felt in Barcelona was relieved. Yeah. From the outside, this was when I like the great successes of recent years. The opera world was like, whoo, breathing such a sigh of relief. So then it was

heart-rending 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. I know what you mean. Because I'm very, very, very, very grateful. I got to do it and then I get to be here.

I remember going to a party afterwards and everyone was like, oh, I'm amazing, amazing.

And I thought, well, yeah, cool. It was not, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was, yeah,

“you're dissociated. And I was completely empty. I think that was because I was so tired. I mean,”

I sleep very, really full compared to what I used to do in a motion. It was a big thing. The pressure, all this things. So it was like, I was just drained. And so how does she deal with that? This dual reality of everybody being dazzled and, and she being an 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 to movie theaters worldwide. I mean, the met production is a huge deal. There are not new productions of Tristan and Isol that 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. 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, you've all shown, decided, and this concept came about even before he knew that she was pregnant to center the idea of kind of pregnancy and childbirth

in the opera to basically introduce something that is not invogners, libredo 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 his old 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. 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 his older to arrive. And when she finally does he dies and then in this kind of ecstasy she dies too, accepts 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 in there. So 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 end point 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. I mean, Wagner was very 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 Davidson having this role as she's dealing with all of these emotions and feelings and processing over her own birth and her own motherhood.

internal bleeding that 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 something in some way enacted on stage. I mean, nine months ago it's not that long ago and she's dying with all this

“blood. You know, it's it was surprising to 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

they're farewell to each other is also like this recognition that there's going to be something

that continues on after his death. Interesting. Which I think is so beautiful. So the libestode is too, to the new babies. It's interesting. It's very beautiful in me. Yeah, I thought it was really nice. Isolta's final area is called the libestode, which literally means love death. And usually it's kind of

this abstract grand area 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 the 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 have a way of”

looking at one of these works, which the 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 began to come 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 travel with her. And so she was living with them in New York. It is better and how I must say that it is, I know they are fine. I know they are happy with their honey at home and my husband. They're very pleased when I get home, which is very cute and I

hold on and hope they will keep being happy. Yeah. And of course, anything you practice, you get better at, you see to me, so that that's also been practicing for me to like be away and then come home. I wonder, and I don't know if you asked for this, Zach, but 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 the, 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,

through is really complicated, difficult emotions that she had been going through.

One of the things with this old is this, 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 his pages upon pages with emotions and you pour out and then suddenly afterwards. Great, have a good week here. Right. 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 or what you're trying. I like that. That's possible.

Yeah. Sak, 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 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's 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 so it's hard enough when it's just you. And so to really need to be taken 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 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 a invogner's ring cycle at the net and elsewhere. Another role that like as old 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 you used to be important to you aren't anymore. Your focus has changed in ways that are impossible to ignore. That forces you to re-aclimate to the world, to your career,

to everything, to totally re-adjust. 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'm a different person. Well, Zach, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Lisa Dovinson concluded her run of Tristan and his older last night. She scheduled to open the Met's fall season in September as the lead in Verde's Macbeth.

It was edited by Wendy Doer with help from Michael Benoit. Our production manager is for any

“car-toff. 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 Ketroff. See you tomorrow.

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