Birgit nilsson första roll
Although she sang a wide repertoire of operatic and vocal works, Nilsson was best known for her performances in the operas of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. When she was three years old she began picking out melodies on a toy piano her mother bought for her.
Birgit Nilsson – från Västra Karup till Metropolitan
She once told an interviewer that she could sing before she could walk, adding, "I even sang in my dreams". Her vocal talent was first noticed when she began to sing in her church choir. A choirmaster near her home heard her sing and advised her to take voice lessons. She studied with Ragnar Blennow in Åstorp for six months to prepare for an audition at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm where she came in first out of a group of 47 singers and was awarded the Christina Nilsson scholarship named for the famous soprano.
Her teachers at the academy were Joseph Hislop and Arne Sunnegårdh.
Birgit Nilssons karriär – en oavbruten succé
However, she considered herself self-taught: "The best teacher is the stage", she told an interviewer in InNilsson made her debut at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm with only three days' notice, replacing the ailing singer scheduled for the role of Agathe in Carl Maria von Weber 's Der Freischütz. Conductor Leo Blech was not very kind to her and, as she wrote in her autobiography, she even contemplated suicide after the performance.
Under Fritz Busch 's tutelage, her career took wing. He was instrumental in securing her first important engagement outside Sweden, as Electra in Mozart 's Idomeneo at the Glyndebourne Festival in Her birgit nilsson första roll at the Vienna State Opera in was a turning point; she would be a regular performer there for more than 25 birgit nilsson första rolls. Later she returned as Sieglinde, Brünnhilde, and Isolde until She took the title role of Turandotwhich is brief but requires an unusually big sound, to La Scala in Milan inand then to the rest of Italy.
She attained international stardom after a performance as Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City inwhich made front-page news. She said that the single biggest event in her life was being asked to perform at the opening of the th season at La Scala as Turandot in Nilsson was widely known as the leading Wagnerian soprano of her time, the successor to the great Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstadparticularly as Brünnhilde.
However, she also sang many of the other famous soprano roles, among them LeonoreAidaTurandotToscaElektraand Salome. She had, according to The New York Timesa "voice of impeccable trueness and impregnable stamina". The conductor Erich Leinsdorf thought that her longevity, like Flagstad's, had something to do with her Scandinavian heritage, remarking that Wagner required "thoughtful, patient and methodical people.
I drink a little wine and beer.
Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon
I was born with the right set of parents. In sheer power, her high notes were sometimes compared to those of the Broadway belter Ethel Merman. However Nilsson claims her "explosive" high notes that were her biggest asset on-stage "have not been recorded like they should have been" in the studio. She later lamented: "It always made me a little bit sad when I heard my own recordings.
And many people told me that I sang "birgit nilsson första roll" better in person than I do on the recordings! That didn't flatter me at all, because I know what's going to be left when I am no longer singing". Twice at the Met, Nilsson sustained injuries that kept her from performing. In Februaryshe sprained her ankle during a performance of Elektra that resulted in cancellation of one performance that was replaced by a historic performance of Fidelio starring Christa Ludwig.
Nilsson recovered to sing the broadcast performance of Elektra on 27 February.
More seriously, in March she fell and dislocated her shoulder during a rehearsal of Götterdämmerung. Beginning at the summer of at the Bayreuth Festival, Nilsson was obsessively stalked by a much younger American actress and model, Nell Theobalduntil Theobald's suicide nine years later in Nilsson recounted her experiences with Theobald at length in her memoir, La Nilssonin which she referred to Theobald solely as "Miss N.
Nilsson did not get along with famous conductor Herbert von Karajan. Once when rehearsing on stage at the Vienna Staatsoper, her string of pearls broke. While helping her retrieve them, Karajan asked, "Are these real pearls bought with your La Scala fees? Nilsson cabled back: "Busy. The Swedish photographer Lennart Nilssonwho became world famous for his documentation of pregnancy from conception to birth, was asked by the magazine Life to photograph Birgit Nilsson's vocal cords as she sang high C.
Birgit Nilsson turned the proposal down with the words "Your photographer wants me to swallow the tiny camera so he can take pictures of the vocal cord [ sic ]. I don't want that, since I know where it has been before. In one tour performance, after she outlasted him on the high C, he stormed off to Rudolf Bing during the next birgit nilsson första roll, saying that he was not birgit nilsson första roll to continue the performance.
Corelli didn't bite her but he was so delighted with the idea that he told her about Bing's suggestion. She then cabled Bing, informing him she had to cancel the next two performances because she had contracted rabies. When Nilsson started singing Aida at the Met, soprano Zinka Milanov was miffed as Aida had theretofore been "her" role.