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Later in her career, Fremstad experienced difficulties with the top notes of the dramatic soprano range. She retired from professional singing in 1920 and briefly attempted teaching, but her patience for anything less than perfection in her pupils proved to be slim. One "lesson" involved the close
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Her output of recordings is meager. In fact, she believed that recordings could not capture the magic of her performance, and insisted that people hear her live. She made approximately 40 recordings from 1911 to 1915, only 15 of which were ever released. Music critic
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Fremstad allegedly professed to have no interest in romantic entanglements. However, she wed twice, with both marriages ending in divorce. She and her secretary, Mary
Watkins Cushing, also lived together for some time. She died in
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examination of a dissected human head preserved in a jar. The head was kept on a prominent shelf, right as you came into her studio. She was mystified when her few students fled in horror, unwilling to study the human
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in such a setting. She used this head as a tool for determining whether or not prospective students had the "mettle" for an opera career. For
Fremstad, this wasn't anything special; when studying for the role of
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roles. By that time she was singing as a dramatic soprano. Fremstad appeared before the public 351 times as a member of the Met's stellar roster, most frequently as Venus in
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describes her as always being more of a mezzo-soprano than a genuine soprano. Scott, however, acknowledges her impressive qualities as an interpretive artist.
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in the
Metropolitan's premier production, she had gone to the morgue in New York to find out just how much she should stagger under the weight of the head of
90:, taking on their surname of Fremstad. In St. Peter, she worked as a church organist at the local Swedish Lutheran Church. She began her vocal training in
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43:(14 March 1871 – 21 April 1951) was the stage name of Anna Olivia Rundquist, a celebrated
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Opera in 1895. She remained there for at least three years, before going on to
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has called
Fremstad "one of the greatest of Wagnerians"; but in his
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and ensuing fire. (She and Caruso escaped the disaster unharmed.)
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before making her operatic debut as a mezzo-soprano as
Azucena in
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394:(2nd Edition, Oxford University Press. pp. 180–181. 1979)
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Olive
Fremstad scrapbooks (the singer's personal collection)
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70:, she received her early education and musical training in
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Olive
Fremstad holding the head of John the Baptist in the
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Fremstad was the model for Thea
Kronborg, the heroine of
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in 1890 after singing in church choirs, then studied in
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The Grand
Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record
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Olive
Fremstad as Carmen (Metropolitan Magazine 1905)
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The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
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373:The Rainbow Bridge, a biography of Olive Fremstad
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324:. Columbia University Press.
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314:(1995). "In Praise of
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50:who sang in both the
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27:'s 1907 production of
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231:The Record of Singing
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347:"Willa and the Diva"
316:Brigitte Fassbaender
259:The Song of the Lark
144:She appeared at the
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80:Minneapolis
72:Christiania
462:Categories
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353:2011-05-23
274:References
159:Tannhäuser
62:Background
380:, 1954)
256:'s novel
171:Lohengrin
154:Wagnerian
84:Minnesota
68:Stockholm
165:Parsifal
130:Bayreuth
66:Born in
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215:Salome
210:larynx
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30:Salome
349:. PBS
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