Norwegian TV Documentary on Kirsten Flagstad. [c.2009]

Thanks George.

I was stunned to learn that she wanted to be burried in unmarked grave.

Dear Kuma,

Thank you for your most fine reply!

ATB from George.   Med Glad Hilsen!

Correct way to say her name is Shishte' Flagsta' as so many contributors show.Siilent last consonant ...

I remember painfully a BBC Radio Three announcer calling Ki-eee-rsten FalgstaTT!

That was to Germanise her name! 

ATB from George

PS: For me to hear Norwegian spoken so nicely is enough on itself to make me reflective. As a child I spoke Norwegian before English... I understand it perfectly today, but cannot reply in Norwegian. My father banned Norwegian in my childhood home, to prevent me and and brother speaking in a code to our mother as that an Englishman had no idea off. Talk about paranoia. that is probably too personal for this Forum, but there it is!

George,

I thought that was the loudest 'leave me f*&#k alone.' message. 

Certainly she has had enough.

I rate her art highly and she had one of the loveliest voice. 

Dear Kuma,

Her's is one of the few soprano voices that is of itself emotive for me. One senses immediately a tender person, but certainly a brave one just as clearly. She brings beauties out in the music without every seeming to have to do all that much to make the sense inevitable.

In a way she was so strong a presence that even though more than fifty years on and through replay, she seems still here.

And yet she seems never to have complained publicly about her treatment after the War by her country. A stoic of the first order, and of course at the end of her life she was appointed first Opera Director of the newly founded Norwegian Opera, so in a way the breach was at least bridged, if I suspect that it could never be completely forgotten.

ATB from George

Singing Gounod's music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...index=46&list=WL

ATB from George

She was a brilliant singer, and into the early fifties a leading Wagner soprano. Despite protests in the US (where they mistakenly believed her to be a nazi), she was back on the Met roster in 1950 for one last season, where she sang a number of remarkable performances.

This links to a February 1951 Met broadcast, in passable sound, of Walküre, with a line-up that included Frantz as Wotan, the unmatched Treptow as Siegmund, Varnay as Sieglinde and Flagstad as Brünnhilde (one could only dream of this lineup even a few years later). Listen around 1:50 to the appearance of the Valkyrie before Siegmund. Later, she is fantastic in her duet with Wotan. Then Frantz takes over, with an unforgettable Leb Wohl (2:45) and Wer meines Speeres... (2:59). Goosebumps. The Met is giving it all and then some, too. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThixGLoDCn4

Cheers

EJ

Dear EJ,

Here she is singing the lovely aria,

• "Serse (Xerxes), HWV 40, Act I: Frondi tenere e belle… Ombra mai fu, "Largo"" by Flagstad, Kirsten

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRkHYwaDhfE

I know her Wagnerian work very well actually, but not your Met linked performance. I promise to give it my attention next!

But it is outside Wagner that she demonstrated a range that is breath-taking. Her Wagner was almost certainly often far better than it would have been performed by others at the time ...

The best I have heard of her is Greig Sanger [Art songs], where her comprehension of the sense and tenderness in the context of what are essentially miniatures to rival anything since, and for me outshine anything by Schubert. It brings an intimacy and involvement beyond what could be imagined or even reasonably hoped for. The Mezzo-voce, so absent in what Wagner asks for, is all-present beside the most exquisite sense of climax in the best sense ....

Unfortunately the posters on youtube have not yet presented to the public these ultra-special performances, done mainly in the late forties for EMI in London. One can only imagine what the recitals were like from these recordings!

Yet EMI have not seen fit to release them sufficiently, probably because they are minority interest, though her Great Recordings of the Century CD of eighty munutes of Norwegian song recorded from the early twenties to 1948 is certainly my favourite single CD. It ran to one pressing twenty years ago, and is below the horizon now.

Anyway, I am going to listen some more now ...

ATB from George

Dear EJ,

I do apologise. I cannot possibly listen to three hours of Wagner. Not today nor ever again.

I cannot explain why in polite language, so please forgive me.

However here is something more succinct ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsFw8Pp-85o

Erbarme dich, from Passion secnndum St Matthiew, J.S Bach with Kirsten Flagstad

It shows another side that is all too easy to miss.

ATB from George

EJS, many thanks for your link, I had not heard this recording before, Flagstad is magnificent as usual.

For one of my (very many) goose bump moments go to, Der diese Liebe etc. at 2:40.

There are many fine singers around nowadays, but none I think, to match Flagstad in this repertoire.

Morton, good to meet a fellow enthusiast here. I agree, but she wasn't alone. There are tantalising recordings of Frida Leider, in which she sounds stunning despite the most awful sound imaginable. With all due respect to Varnay, Mödl and Nilsson, Leider and Flagstad remain the ultimate exponents of the Hochdramatischer Sopran. 

Met, 1934: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QSndZE8eDM. Incidentally, this was the year that Leider and Flagstad sang together in the Ring, at Bayreuth. In 1935, Flagstad replaced Leider at the Met.

EJ

I certainly am a Wagner enthusiast & have been since my first ENO ‘Twilight of the Gods’ at the Birmingham Hippodrome back in the mid 70’s. Currently I am very much looking forward to the ENO Mastersingers in a couple of weeks.

Frida Leider is another favourite, although I only have one recording by her, a short extract from Parsifal recorded in 1925.

You have probably seen this; it is a lesson on how to sing Wagner from Flagstad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6Stoi8DAqU

Great video. She sounds tired reciting her lecture, but those few lines from Senta's ballad at the start and her singing Siegmund (at oddly low pitch) at the end are worth it.

EJ

Whilst Falgstd's Wagner is the subject of among Wagnerites of considerable though not universal acclaim, she had a much wider range, and it is outside Wagner's music that she shows that not only was she a great soprano, but also a highly intelligent musical. Rarely does such superb singing come with such a perfect sense of the meaning ... 

I know that Redeemer Livesth, Messiah, GF Handel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8hnQP6nuNc

ATB from George

And even more amazing:

He stall feed His flock,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkC5hbtLnDw

Here she sings the parts for contralto AND soprano!

I doubt any alto would attempt this, or any soprano. Then or now ...

The soprano part starts at 2:26.

ATB from George

And here in Bach's Saint Matthew Passion in the Elgar Atkins edition,

Break in Grief.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uaJXHWDQxU

ATB from George

Originally posted by George J

and it is outside Wagner's music that she shows that not only was she a great soprano, but also a highly intelligent musical. 

This implies that she wasn’t an intelligent singer when she was singing Wagner; you don't mean that do you? 

That is funny! I'll let you work out the obvious answer yourself.

ATB from George

Ah, perhaps the intelligence also needs to be in the listener when she sings Wagner!

Very good, but no cigar.

ATB from George

Dear George

Do you also read Norvegian? If you do, I think you would read Danish equally well.

Hilsener fra

Poul

Dear Poul,

I can sort of read Norwegian. At least I can read a news paper and get the idea, but I can listen to the news and get it easily.

I remember as a child listening to my mother, aunt and grandmother speaking Norwegian, and it is a poetic sounding language! 

Unfortunately nowadays, with my aunt and her children and grand children, everyone wants to practice English on me, so chit-chat is never in Norwegian.

Even in September when I was in Norway for the first time in 12 years, I did finding myself understanding the spoken language again. I reckon I would soon speak idiomatically, after only a few months if I lived there.

Very best wishes from George

Remembered

Unforgettable.

Varen [Last Springtime]. Live performance in London ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dqdRwX136c

ATB from George

Wonderful George. The music and pictures brings me back to the mountains of Rondane where I have been a lot in my earlier days.

Her singing also give me a glimt of Maria Callas, singing "Norma" in the start of here carreer.