Word: flagstad
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...World War II, the Met kept right on with Wagner, but did not present Madame Butterfly, because of the opera's cozy attitude toward the Japanese; it was quietly restored to the repertory five months after V-J day. Since war's end, Norwegian Soprano Kirsten Flagstad had been allowed to return to U.S. concert halls (despite protests and picket lines), but German Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (TIME, Jan 17) had been told by some of the most outstanding of concert soloists that he'd better not try. Gieseking's own case had raised...
Cries & Convictions. Last week, the wind was howling hard enough in Chicago to blow any man down, and from a somewhat unexpected quarter. Most fellow musicians had kept their opinions to themselves when Soprano Kirsten Flagstad hit the comeback trail, two years ago, after merely accepting life in occupied Norway (TIME, Dec. 27). But when word got around that Furtwangler would be coming too, they set up an angry cry that could be heard all the way to Vienna...
...Pianist Walter Gieseking, who had played at Joseph Goebbels' bidding. But in varying degrees other musicians had been tarred with the same brush: Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who had once taken a Nazi post, but who fought to keep the Jewish musicians in his Berlin Philharmonic;* and Flagstad, who had returned to occupied Norway to be with her husband (he died before he could be tried for collaboration). Flagstad had never sung for either quislings or Nazis...
...Flagstad, a robust 53 with a dairymaid's complexion, her return to Norway was simply a question of going home to her family, which was in danger. "I never thought of it any other way," she says...
Manhattan's critics had cleared their throats and sung an unaccustomed high C for Flagstad (see above). Next night, in a Carnegie Hall loaded with Met stars and singing teachers, they had to strain their voices again for a singer most of them had never seen, though they had heard her on records...