Kirsten Malfrid Flagstad (12 July 1895 – 7 December 1962) was a Norwegian opera singer, who was the outstanding Wagnerian soprano of her era. Her triumphant debut in New York on 2 February 1935 is one of the legends of opera. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the longstanding General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera said, "I have given America two great gifts — Caruso and Flagstad."
Called "the voice of the century", she ranks among the greatest singers of the 20th century. Desmond Shawe-Taylor wrote of her in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera: "No one within living memory surpassed her in sheer beauty and consistency of line and tone."
Flagstad was born in Hamar, Norway, in her grandparents' home, now the Kirsten Flagstad Museum. Though she never actually lived in Hamar, she always considered it her home town. She was raised in Oslo within a musical family; her father Michael Flagstad was a conductor and her mother Maja Flagstad a pianist. Their other children were also musicians: the conductor Ole Flagstad, pianist Lasse Flagstad, and soprano Karen-Marie Flagstad.
She received her early musical training in Oslo and made her stage debut at the National Theatre, as Nuri in Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland in 1913. Her first recordings were made between 1913 and 1915.
After further study in Stockholm with Dr. Gillis Bratt, she pursued a career in opera and operetta in Norway. In 1919, she married her first husband Sigurd Hall and a year later gave birth to her only child, a daughter, Else Marie Hall. Later that year she signed up with the newly created Opera Comique in Oslo, under the direction of Alexander Varnay and Benno Singer. Varnay was the father of the famous soprano Astrid Varnay. Flagstad's ability to learn roles quickly was noted, as it often took her only a few days to do so. She sang Desdemona opposite Leo Slezak, Minnie, Amelia and other lesser roles at the Opera Comique.
She sang at the Stora Teatern of Gothenburg, Sweden, between 1928 and 1934, and made her debut there singing Agathe in Der Freischütz by Weber. In 1930, a revival of Nielsen's Saul and David featured Flagstad singing the role of Michal. On 31 May 1930 she married her second husband, the Norwegian industrialist and lumber merchant Henry Johansen, who subsequently helped her in expanding her career. In 1932 she made her debut in Rodelinda by Handel.
After singing operetta and lyric roles such as Marguerite in Faust for over a decade, Flagstad decided to take on heavier operatic roles such as Tosca and Aida. The part of Aida helped to unleash Flagstad's dramatic abilities. In 1932, she took on the role of Isolde in Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and appeared to have found her true voice. Ellen Gulbranson, a Swedish soprano at Bayreuth, persuaded Winifred Wagner to audition Flagstad for the Bayreuth Festival. Flagstad sang minor roles in 1933, but at the next season in 1934, she sang the roles of Sieglinde in Die Walküre and Gutrune in Götterdämmerung at the Festival, opposite Frida Leider as Brünnhilde.
Debut at the Metropolitan Opera
Flagstad was first noticed by Otto Hermann Kahn, then chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Opera, on a trip to Scandinavia in 1929, and Met management made overtures soon after. Their letters were never answered, however. At the time, Flagstad had just met her soon to be second husband and had even briefly considered giving up opera altogether. Then, in the summer of 1934, when the Met needed a replacement for Frida Leider, Flagstad agreed to audition for conductor Artur Bodanzky and Met general manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza in St Moritz in August 1934, and she was engaged immediately. Upon leaving St Moritz, Bodanzky's parting words for Flagstad were "Come to New York as soon as you know these roles (Isolde, the three Brünnhildes, Leonore in Fidelio, and the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier). And above all do not go and get fat! Your slender, youthful figure is not the least reason you were engaged."
At the Met Flagstad became a pupil of vocal coach Hermann Weigert, who prepared her for all her roles with the company. Her debut at the Met, as Sieglinde in Die Walküre on the afternoon of 2 February 1935, created a sensation, though it was not planned as a special event. By this time, after weeks of rehearsals, Met management already knew what they had, but they nonetheless decided on a low key debut. Flagstad was unknown in the United States at the time. The performance was, however, broadcast nationwide on the Met's weekly syndicated radio program, and the first inkling of the deluge of critical praise to come was given when intermission host and former Met star Geraldine Farrar discarded her prepared notes, overwhelmed by what she had just heard, and breathlessly announced that a new star had just been born. Days later, Flagstad sang Isolde, and later that month, she performed Brünnhilde in Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung for the first time. Before the end of the season, Flagstad sang Elsa in Lohengrin, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, and her first Kundry in Parsifal.
Further career in America and elsewhere
Almost overnight, she had established herself as the pre-eminent Wagnerian soprano of the era. It has been said that she saved the Metropolitan Opera from looming bankruptcy. Her performances, sometimes three or four a week in her early days at the Met, quickly sold out at the box office as soon as they went on sale. Her services to the Met were not from box office receipts alone; her nationwide personal appeals to radio listeners during Saturday matinee intermissions brought thousands of dollars in donations to the Met's coffers. Fidelio (1936 and later) was her only non-Wagnerian role at the Met before the war. In 1935, she performed all three Brünnhildes in the San Francisco Opera's Ring cycle. In 1937, she first appeared at the Chicago City Opera Company.
In 1936 and 1937, Flagstad performed the roles of Isolde, Brünnhilde, and Senta at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, under Sir Thomas Beecham, Fritz Reiner and Wilhelm Furtwängler, arousing as much enthusiasm there as she had in New York. She also toured Australia in 1938. Hollywood also tried to cash in on Flagstad fever, after her sudden popularity in the US in the mid-1930s, with her many appearances on NBC Radio, The Kraft Music Hall with Bing Crosby, and regular appearances on CBS's The Ford Sunday Evening Hour. Though Flagstad was not interested in stardom or Hollywood contracts per se, she did make trips to Hollywood during the late 1930s for publicity photo shoots, public appearances, concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, and she filmed a rendition of Brünnhilde's Battle Cry from Die Walküre for the Hollywood variety show anthology The Big Broadcast of 1938, in which she was introduced to American film audiences by Bob Hope. Flagstad and Sonja Henie are the only two Norwegians to have their own stars on Hollywood's "Walk of Fame".
Her career at the Met, however, was not without its ups-and-downs. Flagstad got involved in a long-running feud with tenor co-star Lauritz Melchior after Melchior took offense to some comments Flagstad made about "stupid publicity photos" during a game of bridge in Flagstad's hotel suite while the two were on tour together in Rochester, NY. Present during the infamous bridge game were Flagstad, Melchior and his wife, and Edwin McArthur. Afterwards, Melchior fanned the flames further by insisting that there be no solo curtain calls for Flagstad when the two performed together. Audiences had no clue that, despite the marvelous and sometimes historic performances, the two never said a word to each other off stage for the next two years. It was Flagstad's husband Henry Johansen who finally brought the two together to make peace.
Flagstad also feuded with the Met's general manager, Edward Johnson, after conductor Artur Bodanzky's death, when she asked to be conducted for a few performances by her accompanist, Edwin McArthur, rather than by the Met's new conductor Erich Leinsdorf. Flagstad had wanted this for McArthur, whom she had taken under her wing. Johnson refused and would not hear of it any further. Flagstad did get her way, though; she went over Johnson's head and discussed the matter with the Met's board of directors, particularly David Sarnoff, RCA and NBC founder and chairman. It was Sarnoff who made the arrangements for McArthur to begin conducting Met productions on a limited basis. Her relationship with Johnson improved, however; just before Flagstad left the Met in 1941, on the night of her 100th performance of Isolde, she received 100 roses, courtesy of Melchior and Johnson.