What a wonderful remembrance! Thank you!

I heard many stories like that about her and her voice (for me the best wagnerian dramatic soprano of all times) has that sound of LOVE !!!! God bless her great soul in heaven 🙏

Before her Met debut, Nilsson said what a relief it was to sing in a house where she didn't have to hold back.

Not I, either.

She was the greatest of them all.

Right! In the 90ties, so was told me, that for instance young talented tenors, have been pushed from stage to stage, to many roles and singing in a short period of time. This ruined their voice and more.

I love Wagner and this is great advice. Many singers have come to grief by not taking it. I think of Anja Silja and Gwyneth Jones first.

The 1948 studio recording with HMV. Elisabeth Höngen is the Brangane.

baritonebynight I guess it was only the Siegfried one?

I have heard many Melba recordings but never one that suggests power . the recordings are of course very old and those who enjoy them must be capable of using a great deal of imagination to reconstruct a full voice .

Dame Melba was a coloratura soprano, a very high voice. Her voice isn't made for Brünnhilde.

Melba must have been dreadful when singing Wagner. Her italian was atrocious so god knows what her german sounded like with her unescapable australian twang!

And look what happened to Varnay. She sang Brunhilde in her early twenties and her career was over after a mere 55 years.

Are you joking? It is extremely LOW in all main roles.

Lol Glad you’re around to correct Kirsten Flagstad.

@@Brap-pl2me It isn’t about correcting Flagstad. Verdi is 500 times more vocally demanding than Wagner will ever be.

It's in the ear of the beholder. Verdi is just as vocally demanding but Wagner is heavier.

@@Brap-pl2me Wagner is not heavier nor louder than Verdi. From today’s singer for instance Dolora Zajick also confirmed it! And many many manyyy other dramatic singers with the biggest voices. Wagner is heavy only in the middle voice but not in the upper register nor really in the low parts. Verdi is heavy in: LOW, MIDDLE AND HIGHS.

LMAOOOOO

Nice joke!

Either you are making a enormous joke or you know absolutely nothing about operatic voices and performing. To compare an overextended lyrico-spinto who sings far beyond what her voice can attain properly to the absolute greatest soprano voice of all time is just idiotic. Remember that even at 70 she was preferred for the Das Rheingold Fricka by Solti and London records in the groundbreaking first full recording of the Ring.

Hello hyataganh. First of all, Madame Flagstad did not become the biggest (and I do not mean one of the biggest, THE biggest) star of the entire Metropolitan Opera House which boasted of many other fantastic singers during the years that she sang there before returning to Norway during the Second World War (specifically 1935-1941) simply because she had more opportunities than many others. First of all, all of the other very great singers at the Metropolitan at that time were already AT the Metropolitan, and had arrived as European stars much earlier than Flagstad. She was already nearly 40 years old, and had contemplated retirement from the operatic stage multiple times before the opportunity presented itself for her to audition for the Metropolitan Opera House (she had been contacted several years earlier by Otto Kahn after he saw her Tosca in Oslo, but she wasn’t ambitious or interested in going abroad at the time, so nothing came of this). When she actually arrived to the Metropolitan, no one knew who she was or if she would sing particularly well because she had no international fame. The most knowledge connoisseurs of Wagner in particular had of her was that they were aware she had sung smaller roles at Bayreuth in the two preceding operatic seasons, and that she had had success in these roles, but no one was expecting a star of the first magnitude to arrive from a Nordic country that did not even have its own Opera House (Norway for a few years had a small Opera Comique company which had folded, and outside of this, all opera performances were simply held in the National Theatre which was not dedicated to opera). The fact that her voice was one of unexpected richness, abundant in power as Henderson, who was a most severe old critic who had heard people like Adelina Patti in the previous century, described, as well as her pleasing stage presence and interpretive sincerity excited the New York audience without end. Immediately after her debut as Sieglinde in Die Walkure, everyone was talking about her and expectations built up for her upcoming performance of Isolde. This excitement from the public was totally spontaneous and nothing to do with any clever publicity or marketing, and the fact that she became the no. 1 box office attraction at the Met during a time when people were still trying to recover from the Great Depression proves that her impact as an artist on the public was profound, even without any fanfare to announce her glorious debut. The idea that she was the greatest star of the Met at the time is substantiated by Robert Tuggle, for many years the archivist of the Metropolitan Opera and who you may find talking about this in two different documentaries about Flagstad both available on KZfaq, and Charles O’Connell, an important record producer at the time of Flagstad’s fame, who in his book ‘The Other Side of the Record’ admits that Flagstad was the single most important figure who contributed to the revitalization of the Met during those difficult years coming out of the Depression. Madame Flagstad did get opportunities, but very late in her career as an opera singer, especially in comparison to the other numerous artists who were already invited to the Metropolitan, none of whom made such a tremendous impression on the public immediately. Therefore, it is proof that her talent was most certainly unique, and her success was due not only to opportunities, as many other singers both before her, during her time, and after got great opportunities but did not make anything special out of these, but due to her effect on an audience.

Next, her discourse is not meant to scare people, but it should serve as advice for young singers who wish to sing the heavy Wagnerian roles early in their careers, and which in many cases has proved detrimental to several younger singers, especially more recent ones that have prematurely entered the Wagnerian repertoire. As Flagstad herself commenced Wagnerian roles late, from her perspective, it would be wise for anyone else who wishes to sing Wagner to wait until they feel sufficiently mature. Wagner himself knew that what he was asking of his singers was difficult, and was rarely satisfied with the results even in his time, so I think that he would also agree that young inexperienced singers should not attempt his main roles too early in case they might strain their voices when trying to be heard over his consistently thick orchestration. Now, there is most certainly a high standard needed for any kind of performance, not only Wagnerian, and there is nothing wrong with Madame Flagstad trying to impart the idea of high standards being necessary for performances of Wagner. Music is natural to people, but singing heavy operatic roles is NOT NATURAL TO MOST PEOPLE, which is why we who cannot sing like the great opera singers admire great opera singers. If everyone would be able to naturally sing Wagner as long as they weren’t afraid of it, how come we do not have more great Wagnerian singers today? How come it was difficult for professional opera singers in Wagner’s time to satisfy him when they sang his roles? Could it be that these roles are in fact difficult to sing and require mature and special artists to be able to do them competently? I think we should hear you try to sustain just one big Wagnerian number over a full symphonic orchestra in a large opera house, and if you can do it without trying, then we may discount Madame Flagstad’s advice. However, I doubt that you will do this. This is because sustaining the volume and resonance needed for Wagner without yelling over a large orchestra is difficult and ‘natural’ as you say. It is a combination of talent and highly developed skills. Therefore, any singer must really be experienced and ready before attempting his music. Why do you think Nellie Melba, who was a great coloratura soprano felt that she almost destroyed her voice after singing one performance of Brunnhilde in Siegfried? Maybe because the music was so natural to sing, or maybe because it was in fact hard and heavy on her light voice? She actually had to rest for several months to get her voice back into its former condition after her performance as Brunnhilde, so I think that if as great a singer as her could struggle with Wagner, many other opera singers will. This is why one should try and gain as much experience and wisdom as possible before singing Wagner, therefore Flagstad’s advice to ‘wait’. Her advice is very realistic and not at all meant to be condescending to any other singers, especially the young ones because she is giving them the advice that she herself followed through her career, and it got her a long way, namely a successful operatic career of 40 years on the operatic stage singing a range of different roles. Now, as to arrogance, I really do not see what arrogance you are talking about. She is so not-arrogant that her whole life she refused requests to actually teach vocal technique to young singers because she felt she didn’t know enough about the larynx to be able to tell them what to do. As she says here, she wasn’t taught to explain, only to sing herself, so she didn’t feel she had the qualifications to teach vocal technique and never did. That’s why the most she felt she could do was tape a radio program like this and give some general career and repertoire advice to young singers who were asking for advice from her. Is this arrogant to you? In what way? Do you know how many singers who had half-baked or improper ideas about technique after losing their voices and being unable to sing on stage anymore turned to teaching just to make money based on the weight their names as artists carried and ended up ruining scores upon scores of talented youngsters? Flagstad did not make easy money like this, and never pretended to be the most knowledgeable teacher of vocal technique in the world and in this way never was responsible for ruining anyone. And for this kind of honest person with intergrity and humility you say “imagine the level of arrogance?” How insecure, petty, and vindictive must you be to say something like that against a person who says that she is not qualified to teach and doesn’t do so because of it? Next, if you read anything about Flagstad the person, either a biography, or watched a documentary or even listened to a snippet of a radio program where somebody who knew about her talked about her, you would realize that this woman had no insecurities. She was a very stable, normal person who did not have any complexes or insecurities. She was neither ashamed of anything related to herself not arrogant about anything, and conducted herself both in private life and social occasions with the utmost simplicity and a totally unaffected attitude. As her accompanist Edwin McArthur said in his book about her, when he met her, he couldn’t believe that she was a diva. She looked ‘excessively’ simple to use his words. She had also been surrounded by music since birth as her family was a musical one, so for her music was nothing out of the ordinary. As a result she always behaved normally even when she became a star, and had the most extraordinary psychological and emotional stability under pressure. She had no insecurities nor arrogance about anything, only a simple attitude towards what her duties as a wife and mother were, and only after that, what her duties as a singer were. You call this person arrogant and insecure based on your violently negative perspective on someone you have taken no time to find out anything about while relying on some superstition related to birthdates and horoscopes? You are genuinely worse than any of the other negative commenters on this page as they tend to attack only Flagstad the artist if they dislike something about her, but you attack Flagstad the person without knowing anything concrete about the person! Next time you think of posting a negative comment like this about anyone online for no concrete reason, please control yourself and refrain from doing so.

@@markopejanovic7773 You assume be so much and know so much… I let you be with your security and sureness… completely deluded… and out of proportions… use this energy to do something good for your life. Use this to try hurt others or offend others is a wast of existence… you didn’t hurt or far away got on my nervous…. I basically didn’t read your bullshit… get a life… and don’t try silent others… videos or whatsoever is there out to be agreed or not…. I’m not agree with this woman…. Even with whatever references or choices. You can’t demande or say to others don’t this or that based on your self and untitle exclusivity…just because bla bla bla bla… music is there for all… I repeat get a life. Because I have. And you even don’t know a single nothing about my life…