Kirsten Flagstad, the voice of the 20th century who managed to defeat the 'fake news' that linked her to the Nazis

On February 2, 1935, a Norwegian soprano named Kirsten Flagstad (Hamar, 1895 - Oslo, 1962) caused a sensation in her debut, singing Sieglinde from Wagner's

The Valkyrie

, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

“A singer totally unknown to us has caused ecstasy among the public with her wonderful voice,” said the great Geraldine Farrar during the radio broadcast.

In the following six years, until April 1941, Flagstad became her biggest star and even her economic lifeline.

She sang in almost 250 performances of Wagner's major operas (from

The Flying Dutchman

to

Parsifal

) alongside Beethoven's

Fidelio

.

And she was baptized by critics as “The voice of the century.”

More information

Bayreuth, Wagner's kingdom

On January 22, 1951, that same Norwegian soprano returned to the Met, after almost a decade of absence, to sing her legendary interpretation of the Irish princess in a performance of

Wagner's

Tristan and Isolde .

However, her performance was met with harsh protests, loud boos, insulting letters and even threats of throwing acid at her during the performance.

The performance required strict security measures, with the lights slightly dimmed and police officers everywhere.

But Flagstad once again set the New York theater on fire with her voice and had to come out to greet up to twenty times after the curtain fell.

Between one action and another there had been the Second World War, but also a terrible smear campaign.

This paradox of an artist so loved and hated has inspired the 2021 biography of the Norwegian writer and playwright Ingeborg Solbrekken (Etnedal, 62 years old),

Kirsten Flagstad.

The voice of the century

, which the Fórcola publishing house has just published in Spanish.

This is her fourth book in Norwegian about her legendary compatriot, following

The Voice

(2003),

Madness and Trial: The Treason Case Against Kirsten Flagstad and Henry Johansen

(2007) and

Conspiracy Against Kirsten Flagstad.

The Norwegian State's persecution of a world star

(2016).

The biography has traces of a detective novel, but it is also meticulously documented.

The author starts from the main previous publications about the singer, such as her autobiography written by Louis Biancolli, in 1952, or the personal memoir published by her pianist and close collaborator, Edwin McArthur, in 1965. And it includes the documentation compiled by the Norwegian critic Torstein Gunnarson.

But she also manages to dismantle her entire campaign against her through letters declared “confidential” by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, knitting in her dressing room in Covent Garden, London.Fox Photos (Getty Images)

Flagstad had debuted at the Bayreuth Festival in the summer of 1934, in an edition extremely politicized by the Nazis.

But later he managed to focus his successful career away from his influence, between New York and London.

However, his problems began after the occupation of Norway by the Third Reich.

The soprano she performed incessantly in opera performances and benefit concerts throughout North America, although singing Wagner became a problem.

The Norwegian ambassador to the United States, Wilhelm von Munthe af Morgenstierne, considered her concert in Washington, on November 27, 1940, as a hostile act and a betrayal, as it did not include Norwegian songs.

It was the spark of a campaign against her that worsened after he returned to her country in May 1941, while it was still controlled by the Nazis.

Solbrekken engages the reader by narrating all the particularities that surrounded these events.

She does this with each topic in the book through brief sections and small digressions.

A fluid discourse that does not avoid multiple collateral topics, such as the plot of each opera or the interest of Nazi ideologues in Norway as the origin of the Germanic race.

She also does not avoid the psychological portrait of the singer.

Kirsten was an artist as enormous for music as she was tiny for empathy.

This is demonstrated by her cold relationship with both her mother Maja, her sister Karen-Marie and her daughter Else.

But she also loved the few people she trusted, like the pianist Edwin McArthur and the actor Bernard Miles.

She was also a devoted wife who had actually returned to Norway at the request of her husband, Henry Johansen, an opportunistic businessman who collaborated with the Nazis.

But the soprano stood firm and she never performed in occupied Norway, as she limited her public appearances during the war to Stockholm and Zurich.

In any case, the diplomat Morgenstierne, who became the true villain of the book, managed to weave an official network of hoaxes and slander around her as a Hitler sympathizer.

Flagstad lived through a terrible ordeal, after 1945, that destroyed her prestige, her health and her finances.

She was associated with an underground Nazi movement, called

The Economic Ring

, and not only was her property seized, but she was denied a passport and her husband died in prison without being able to say goodbye to him.

Kirsten Flagstad, Norwegian soprano, at the Royal Festival Hall, during a performance that received a standing ovation.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Sir Malcom Sargeant.Personalities (©2001 Credit:Topham Picturepoint)

Until 1947 he could not sing again on the big opera stages, but from then on he had to face public opinion contaminated by lies about his collaboration with Nazism.

In Norway she ended up being officially declared “dead” by the authorities and her royal family ignored her.

A misogynistic harassment, as Solbrekken emphasizes, that other male artists with much clearer ties to the Third Reich did not suffer.

The stress caused by so many insults and protests during her performances led to an increasingly serious outbreak of psoriasis and episodes of depression and anxiety.

The book also portrays some of her outbursts, such as her love for alcohol and cards.

She always traveled with a briefcase containing flasks of martini, cognac and whiskey, although she never drank before singing.

And she often performed solitaire complexes with two decks during breaks in performances and concerts.

But the book dedicates quite a few pages to his vocal evolution.

At her first steps as an opera singer, from the ages of 25 to 35, from light repertoire and comic opera to Wagnerian dramas.

A time when her voice grew noticeably in volume and color, as her muscles expanded and her clothes tore.

But it also compiles multiple testimonies and opinions from critics of the time.

Of particular note is the section dedicated to Wagnerian expert Ernest Newman, who described in

The Sunday Times

the purity and warmth of her voice, after listening to her London debut in 1936, as a bright, clear sun hitting the snow.

A critic who admired the peculiarity of her instrument, with a low and middle register of exquisite quality, and powerful treble that shone like a radiant white light.

But he also attacked the psychological parsimony of Wagner's interpretations of her as Isolde and Brünnhilde.

Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad receives a bouquet of flowers from a stewardess as she arrives by plane to sing in London, April 16, 1952. Hulton Archive (Getty Images)

There is also no shortage of comments about his best recordings.

This is the case of his live recordings, from 1935 to 1941, together with the tenor Lauritz Melchior, with whom he did not get along well, or under the baton of Wilhelm Furtwängler, from 1937 to 1952, who was always his favorite conductor.

And there's a juicy aside about her legendary EMI/Warner Classics recording of

Tristan und Isolde

where she acted as a mediator between Furtwängler and producer Walter Legge.

Precisely as a result of that recording, the problems that she had with the high C in her maturity are explained, both in

Tristan and Isolde

and in

Siegfried

and

The Twilight of the Gods

, and the need to reinforce it in the studio with the voices of other sopranos

Despite this, his voice continued to impress until the end.

The testimony that Solbrekken collects from Decca's production assistant, Erik Smith, during the recording of

Rhinegold

in the fall of 1958 is priceless. Of that venerable old woman with a funny hat who knitted vests for everyone and who, When he had to sing the character of Fricka, he put down the needles and covered the Vienna Philharmonic itself with his fabulous stream of voice.

Engineer Gordon Parry also remembers that he turned off some of the vocal microphones to balance the mix and director George Solti remembers that incredible voice that always floated above the orchestra and could ride the crest of the sound wave.

The recordings were Flagstad's true testament.

Her relationship with Norway picked up in her later years with her appointment, in 1958, as the first conductor of Den Norske Opera.

But she never wanted a grave, because in her will she asked to be cremated and that her ashes not be preserved.

The Spanish edition by Javier Jiménez benefits from abundant and explanatory additional notes with QR codes that allow access to web pages and numerous recordings available on YouTube.

The book opens with a prologue by Fernando Fraga and the agile translation by Lotte K. Tollefsen lacked a technical revision that would have avoided some errors such as translating the aforementioned “high C,” which Wagner uses in Isolde and Brünnhilde,

as

“sharp C.” ”, when paradoxically that note is always natural.

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