Kirsten Flagstad
Kirsten Malfrid Flagstad (born July 12, 1895 in Hamar , † December 7, 1962 in Oslo ) was a Norwegian singer ( highly dramatic soprano ). She is considered one of the greatest Wagner interpreters ever.
Life
She grew up in a family of musicians: her father, Michael Flagstad (1869–1930), was a conductor and violinist, her mother, Marie Flagstad Johnsrud, a pianist. She made her stage debut in 1913 at the National Theater in Oslo with the role of Nuri in Eugen d'Albert's Lowlands .
After studying in Stockholm , she sang operettas for several years in Oslo, Gothenburg (since 1928 at the Storm Theater there) and on tours in France. After her second marriage, she withdrew into private life for some time. In 1932 she returned to the stage and, after the intercession of Ella Gulbranson, a Norwegian singer, got performances at the Richard Wagner Festival in Bayreuth . In 1933 she sang Ortlinde in Die Walküre and the 3rd Norne in Götterdämmerung . In 1934 she also sang there, she gave the Sieglinde and the Gutrune.
Her breakthrough came on February 2, 1935, when she was enthusiastic about a radio broadcast by Sieglinde at the Metropolitan Opera . There followed numerous appearances in New York , San Francisco and Chicago , mostly in works by Wagner, but also in Fidelio . Conductors were u. a. Eugene Ormandy and Hans Lange . With her cast Wagner operas were performed up to four times a week on Broadway . In 1936 she sang Isolde at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London . Her performances at the Royal Opera House under the direction of Fritz Reiner and Wilhelm Furtwängler were also enthusiastically received . Her interpretation of the Isolde under Furtwängler is still unmatched by connoisseurs.
Together with Lauritz Melchior , she formed the undisputed best Tristan and Isolde couple of the 1930s: the two sang the title roles in all 48 performances of this opera at the New York Met between 1935 and 1941.
In 1941 Kirsten Flagstad moved back to her husband in Norway, where she stayed until the end of the war. It is considered unencumbered, as it had never sung in front of the German occupiers, but privately for resistance. Her husband was imprisoned after the war for doing business with Germans and died a little later.
After the Nazi era, she continued her career with numerous appearances and, like before the war, was engaged a lot in England and the USA, where Norwegian immigrants even made trumped-up allegations of Nazi friendliness. On May 22, 1950 she was the soloist in the world premiere of Richard Strauss ' Four Last Songs under Wilhelm Furtwängler in London . In March and April of the same year she sang Brünnhilde in Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen under Furtwängler at La Scala in Milan . In 1952, at the age of 57, she played Gluck's Alceste and Purcell's Dido in London without pay to support the Mermaid Theater. After retiring from the stage in 1957, she was artistic director of the Norwegian Opera in Oslo from 1958 to 1960 .
A Kirsten Flagstad Museum was opened in Hamar, the town of her birth, in 1985 , which also dealt with the allegations raised in post-war Norway and the misconduct of official bodies in her home country towards her as a subject. At your request, after her death from cancer, she was buried in an anonymous cemetery (not uncommon in Norway as Minnelund) in Oslo. Your descendants do not live in Norway.
Today she honors Norway with an image on the 100 kroner note and on the national planes. The square in front of the new Oslo Opera House, which resembles an iceberg and was built into the water, was named "Kirsten Flagstad plass". There is also a statue of her here.
effect
Flagstad is considered to be one of the greatest opera singers of the 20th century, and there are no other singers of her generation that still have as many CDs on the market today as her. The flexibility of her voice, her interpretation of the alternation between heroic and tender passages, was particularly praised. Her voice was full and strong and at the same time smooth and brilliant.
literature
- Encyclopedia Britannica 2001, DVD version
Web links
- Kirsten Flagstad in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO)
- Kirsten Flagstad in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Kirsten Flagstad
- Photos, etc. a. by Kirsten Flagstadt
- 2009 Documentary "Kirsten Flagstad" by the humanistic Norwegian filmmaker Anne Karoline Frogner, on youtube with English subtitles
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jens Malte Fischer : Big Voices , JB Metzler 1993 ISBN 3-476-00893-2 , p. 265 ( preview on Google Books ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Flagstad, Kirsten |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Flagstad, Kirsten Malfrid (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Norwegian singer (highly dramatic soprano) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 12, 1895 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hamar , Norway |
| DATE OF DEATH | 7th December 1962 |
| Place of death | Oslo , Norway |