Word: flagstad
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...reason for last year's deficit was the 11% slump in attendance over the year before, partly due to the Met's shortage in its chief stock in trade, fine voices. Unexpected blows last season were the loss of its greatest artist and box-office draw, Kirsten Flagstad (holed up or held up in Norway); its next-best Wanerian soprano, Marjorie Lawrence (victim of paralysis); Tenors Jussi Björling (stranded in Sweden) and Tito Schipa (recalled to Italy). Like a consistently losing team, the Met did not attract packed grandstands...
Only in Switzerland, in freedom's land, has Flagstad sung. There, fortnight ago, at Zurich, she sang in three operas. One was Beethoven's Fidelio, in which the heroine flourishes her pistol at a tyrant...
...opera-lovers remember Singer Flagstad with reverence and affection as the greatest Isolde since Nordica. She returned to Norway in April 1941 for a summer's visit, then broke a two-month silence to announce that she would remain there until the war ended. More silence followed, punctuated only by rumors-that the Norwegian Brünnhilde, who likes good food & drink, was enjoying plenty of both in heavily rationed Norway; that she was a popular guest at quisling parties; that en route to Norway she had stopped in Berlin, described Nazi Germany as "a lovely place...
...also a fact that, whatever her views, Singer Flagstad has not sung since her return, either in Norway or in any of the big German opera houses...
...reporters Kirsten Flagstad said little, but that little was as eloquent as her tremendous voice. Asked how it felt to be in free Switzerland, she replied in broken German: "We just walk around and look and look. Oh, everything is so marvelous and beautiful, like a fairy tale...