Flagstad Collection
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Virtually unknown outside of Scandinavia until she
was nearly 40 years old (and considering retirement), Kirsten Flagstad
exploded upon the operatic firmament with a Metropolitan Opera debut
on 2 Feburary 1935 which just happened to be broadcast across the
United States and Canada. Overnight she became the pre-eminent Wagnerian
soprano of her generation — for some “the voice of the
century.” She travelled West to San Francisco later that year
to sing all three of Wagner's Brünnhildes for the first time,
in the opera company's first Ring.
In the next season, the San Francisco Opera succeeded
in doing what the Metropolitan was never able to do: put the two
leading Wagnerian sopranos of the time on stage at the same time.
In two performances of Die Walküre, audiences in the
War Memorial Opera House heard Flagstad as Brünnhilde and Lotte
Lehmann as Sieglinde, with Fritz Reiner conducting, Lauritz Melchior
as Siegmund, Emanuel List as Hunding, and Friedrich Schorr as Wotan.
After virtually retiring in 1941 to be with her husband
in Norway during the Second World War, Kirsten Flagstad's success
in Tristan und Isolde and Walküre at the San
Francisco Opera in the Fall of 1949 (at the age of 54) was a turning
point for her return to the United States. Following her death in
1962 her grandson divided her private tape collection between the
cities of her greatest triumphs: New York and San Francisco. Thus
the Archive shares with the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of
Recorded Sound of The New York Public Library this significant legacy
of a singer whose career spanned the history of recording from acoustic
to stereo.
 From
the San Francisco broadcast of Act 2 of Die Walküre
(on 13 November 1936, one of the two with Lehmann), here is Flagstad
singing part of Brünnhilde's famous “Battle Cry”.
Click on the microphone icon to download a 675k sound file in
au format.
Pictured above is the cover of a RCA Victor catalog
supplement for May 1938. Inside Victor announced a new recording
of Beethoven's "Ah, Perfido" (Op.65):
We present with particular pride the first of a group
of new recordings by the incomparable Kirsten Flagstad, and the
equally unique Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Eugene
Ormandy. Never before has the magnificent voice of Flagstad been
revealed with such faithful reproduction of its heroic amplitude,
its glowing richness, color and expressiveness. Never before has
this voice been heard on records with so wonderful an orchestra
as assisting artist. Here is music as beautiful, as intensely
dramatic, as unhackneyed as the day it was written. No one who
loves music should miss hearing these superb records.
Last modified:
October 5, 2006
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