Posted October 14, 2014

Ethan Morden’s excellent book, Opera Anecdotes”  has many stories about opera singers. One of the funniest sections is the one on Olive Fremstad, a great Wagnerian who sang the roles of Brünnhilde, Venus, Elsa, Kundry and Isolde at the turn of the 20th Century:

“The daughter of a stern Methodist, Fremstad often looked at the world – and art – from the vantage of fundamentalist “witness.” Once she (Fremstad) said, “I consider the whole opera Parsifal to be just an elaborate revival meeting.”

The photo is of Fremstad as Kundry, one of her greatest roles.