Flagstad: A Personal Memoir

By: Edwin McArthur

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Synopsis: An intimate, no-holds-barred, light-and-dark portrait of the great Norwegian soprano/opera singer Kirsten Flagstad from her first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House on February 2, 1935, to her death on December 7, 1962. Edwin McArthur was Flagstad's accompanist--and often her orchestral conductor as well--throughout her American career. He knew her in her hours of triumph, during the dramatic struggles through which the Second World War put her, during her trial in Norway (at which he testified and gave depositions), during her painful return to the United States as a falsely accused "quisling" after the war, and in the strange period of her partial--and then complete--retirement. Not a book about music (McArthur does quote some opinions of Flagstad the artist and occasionally expresses his own reactions, but he preponderantly sticks to the subject of Flagstad the woman), this is an intensely personal portrait. Its subject emerges as devoted, blindly selfish, alternately generous and cruel even to her own children, wayward, overwhelming, finally inscrutable, but always fascinating. The book also provides one view of the strange (and at times dirty) inside business dealings in the world of opera and concert.