Word: flagstad
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Last year the opera had finished with a $119,000 deficit. "Without Flagstad," said an opera board member, "we might lose...
...opera-loving San Franciscans, it was the nearest thing to an earthquake since 1906. It was bad enough that the trustee of the War Memorial Opera House had refused to let Norwegian Soprano Kirsten Flagstad sing there next season (TIME, July 25). Last week the sponsoring Opera Association Board set off a temblor of its own: if Flagstad could not sing, for the first time in 27 years there would be no opera season...
...Trustee Richard Newhall, "so I'm one of the heels of San Francisco . . .!" Later, he announced, "I never heard of this Madame Flagstaff till this came up." His opponents howled at his howler. Acting Mayor George Christopher raised his voice: "I don't give a damn about Flagstad. But I don't want the opera to die. I'd sing her roles myself first. Our culture is at stake." He calle'd on the War Memorial board to relent. The American Legion's national headquarters wired that it had nothing against Flagstad. Still...
Opera Singer Kirsten Flagstad had to take vinegar with her tea. Manhattan's Metropolitan, which had snubbed her as a suspected Nazi sympathizer during her first postwar visits to the U.S. in 1947-48, came up with an offer for next season (she turned it down because of previous concert bookings). Meanwhile, in San Francisco, trustees of the War Memorial Opera House canceled her four performances scheduled for this fall, "because of the controversial character of her public appearances elsewhere in the United States...
...years since her debut at the Berkshire Festival, when Serge Koussevitzky had called her "a native Flagstad," Norfolk-born Dorothy Maynor has gone a long way. She has sung with most of the great U.S. orchestras, crisscrossed the U.S. and South America with concert tours. However, like her famed contralto counterpart, Marian Anderson, she has not yet been invited to sing at the Metropolitan Opera...