When Kirsten Flagstad in 1935 made her Metropolitan Opera debut in Wagner’s Die Walkuere, the audience cheered and the press groped for comparisons with “the irrecoverable magic” of Swedish-born Soprano Olive Fremstad.* Last week another Swedish Wagnerian soprano strode the Met’s stage, and this time the comparison was to the “incomparable” Flagstad herself. The debutante: 41-year-old Birgit Nilsson, whose appearance in a new production of Tristan und Isolde touched off the kind of debut furor the Met’s Wagnerians have not witnessed in a quarter-century.
A solid (5 ft. 8 in., 150 lbs.) and imposing woman, Dramatic Soprano Nilsson was discovered, as the curtain rose, pacing the deck of the ship bearing Isolde to King Mark of Cornwall; for all the world she looked like a handsome Viking figurehead. In the long, angry denunciation of Tristan that followed, she displayed a big, flashing, vibrant voice that galvanized her audience and conveyed an immediate sense of the turbulent passions that animate the role. As the opera unfolded, Soprano Nilsson continued to dominate the stage with such ringing power that she cut without difficulty through the opulent textures of the Wagnerian orchestra—particularly in the climactic Liebestod in Act III. Perhaps because of debut stresses, the voice also had its marked drawbacks; at times it sounded strained, took on a steely glitter when more opulent warmth was called for. Apparently a more severe critic of herself than some of Manhattan’s reviewers, Soprano Nilsson said later: “After the first act I was just physically tired, and my throat was dry. The first act is as hard as all of Aida.”
The new production as a whole was less exciting. German Tenor Karl Liebl, substituting as Tristan for the ailing Ramon Vinay, had neither stage presence nor the power to match the Nilsson salvos. Baritone Walter Cassel as Kurvenal and Bass Jerome Hines as King Mark both turned in workmanlike performances, and Soprano Irene Dalis was impressive as Brangaene. Conductor Karl Boehm led his orchestra through a methodical reading. As for the decor, with the world’s best to choose from, the Met had again picked the second-rate. The sets by German Designer Teo Otto were pedestrian and confusing: starkly realistic castle turrets and ramparts set alongside fanciful, gold-leafed trees and stylized, sawtooth waves.
Soprano Nilsson’s career has gathered slow momentum over the last decade. Born on a ‘Swedish farm, she was still plowing fields when she was 18 (“My parents wanted I should be a good farmer”) and singing in the local Lutheran church choir. Then a neighboring choirmaster started giving her vocal lessons, persuaded her to enter the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. Delayed by the war, she made her first real splash in 1947 with the Stockholm Opera singing Verdi’s Lady Macbeth. Gradually she developed a repertory that now includes all the Wagnerian soprano parts, many of the great roles of Verdi, Puccini, Richard Strauss, plus an assortment of contemporary roles. Two and a half years ago (TIME, June 3, 1957), her Isolde at Florence’s Maggio Musicale was one of the great Wagnerian performances of the decade.
Married to a music-minded Stockholm restaurateur (one of his restaurants is called Rheingold), Soprano Nilsson spends much of her leisure time at a home in Zurich, where she stores her collection of furs (“They are,” she says, “very useful”). This season at the Met she will also sing in Wagner’s Die Walkuere and The Flying Dutchman, plus Beethoven’s Fidelia. Next season she will return for another of her favorites, Puccini’s Turandot. “I could sing Turandot right now,” said she coolly as she walked offstage after last week’s marathon performance. What did she think of her Met ovation? “I didn’t believe my ears,” said Birgit Nilsson. “I thought the house fell down.”
* Who made a fortune estimated at $1,000,000, took 40 curtain calls at her emotion-packed farewell performance at the Met as Elsa in Lohengrin in 1914. She died in 1951 in her middle 80s.
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