Word: flagstads
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Dates: during 1935-1935
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Considering the fact that Marjorie Lawrence has been singing in opera for only three years and that it was her first attempt at Brünnhilde in German, her performance was one to command high praise. She lacked the grandeur of Frida Leider, the vocal powers of Kirsten Flagstad. But she conducted herself with more confidence and poise than do many of the singers who have had long experience on the Metropolitan stage. Her voice was uneven but at its best it was vibrantly warm, true in its top notes, rich when it was low. More than most...
...Flagstad was 36 when she ventured beyond the Scandinavian boundaries to Bayreuth, sang small roles the first summer, Sieglinde the next. On the strength of her Bayreuth appearances, Gatti-Casazza and Conductor Artur Bodanzky asked her to come to St. Moritz and sing for them there. The room was small, her voice muffled by heavy hangings. But a new Wagnerian was badly needed and she was given a contract. When Conductor Bodanzky queried her about her acting, she answered modestly: "I don't do very much...
Even with a Metropolitan contract, Flagstad was loath to leave Norway. She had married Henry Johansen, a wealthy lumber merchant. The Christmas holiday season was on. She liked to ski and she dreaded new audiences. But if she was nervous before her debut, no one at the Metropolitan observed any sign of it. She knitted placidly before she went on stage, knitted between scenes. No high-strung person could have endured the ten weeks which followed. She had sung Elsa (Lohengrin) only in Norwegian, Elisabeth (Tannhäuser) only in Swedish. Now she had to relearn both in German...
Critics were so excited to hear a really great voice that everything Flagstad did was greeted with praise, some of it so indiscriminate that readers were led to believe that the greatest Wagnerian of all time had suddenly popped from the blue. Yet some laymen could marvel at her voice, at her poise, at her endurance and still wish at times that she possessed more fire, a more heroic conception of Wagner's great heroines. To some she seems curiously impersonal, a cold Northern light withal her great talent...
Offstage Kirsten Flagstad is a simple, unassuming person, who keeps no maid or secretary because she hates to have anyone fussing around her. She is shy with strangers, content to knit, play solitaire, see Greta Garbo cinemas, eat one spanking meal a day and treat herself to a half bottle of champagne when she feels that a performance has been a success. Since she arrived in the U. S. the hearty Norse has never had reason to deny herself the champagne reward. Like every singer who has made a Metropolitan success, she has taken to the road, given concerts before...