Word: flagstads
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...Everybody's another Flagstad when I'm being told about her," grumbled the Philadelphia Orchestra's Eugene Ormandy. But after listening to recordings, he hired Norwegian Soprano Aase Nordmo-Lövberg, sight unseen. Last week Soprano Lövberg, 34, a statuesque blonde, appeared in Philadelphia's Academy of Music for her American debut. Despite a deep chest cold, she sang a challenging program of arias from Beethoven's Fidelio and Wagnerian selections. Soprano Lövberg proved to be a sort of Flagstad in miniature, more lyric than dramatic, with a round, pure...
Gluck: Alceste (Kirsten Flagstad, Raoul Jobin; Geraint Jones Orchestra and Singers conducted by Geraint Jones; London, 4 LPs). This version of the opera, which Composer Christoph Willibald Gluck predicted would "please in 200 years," is distinguished by some stunning choral singing and a sumptuous, apparently effortless performance by Soprano Flagstad, recorded last year when she was 61. Her role: the legendary Greek queen who goes to death in exchange for her husband's life-Apollo has him booked for liquidation-but eventually so moves the god that he revives her. French Canadian Tenor Jobin as the king sings powerfully...
...opera, leaving other postwar singers to peep about to find themselves honorable mention. But slowly, and largely unnoticed in the U.S., old Europe has fashioned a new crop of talented women singers. If none yet quite equals Callas, Tebaldi or the retired lioness of Wagnerian opera, Kirsten Flagstad, all have developed personal styles that promise fresh views of the operatic literature. Among the best of the new divas...
...midnight. Ruthlessly he excised musical sentimentalities, toned down the deathbed exuberance of handsome Tenor Windgassen ("You're practically dead. You can hardly talk, let alone sing"). On opening night last week, a big share of the applause went to Soprano Nilsson, who was compared to the great Kirsten Flagstad. But the star of the occasion was Rodzinski himself. Perched on a high stool in the pit, he mimed every emotion, sprang up repeatedly to sustain notes with sure baton sweeps. During breaks in the four-hour, 50-minute evening he changed dripping shirts, gave himself an alcohol rub, gulped
...Bing imported Bayreuth's Martha Moedl (as Brünnhilde), Wolfgang Windgassen (as Siegmund and Siegfried), and Marianne Schech of the Munich Staatsoper (as Sieglinde and Gutrune). All three gave occasionally fine performances, but no one of them dominated the stage in the spacious manner of a Kirsten Flagstad, a Helen Traubel or a Lauritz Melchior. The most consistently good performances, both vocally and dramatically, were supplied in the supporting roles-Norman Kelley as Mime, Blanche Thebom as Fricka and Waltraute, Jean Madeira as Erda. What really held audiences, however, was the Wagnerian power...