2018 CENTENNIAL REVIEW by BirgitNilsson

A glance at contemporary reviews demonstrates that this assessment is uncolored by the nostalgia that can seep into any operatic conversations, or the ten dency automatically to view a past that can no longer be recaptured as better than the pale present. Reviews and eyewitness assessments of Nilsson (Birgit Nilsson 100—An Homage, published in association with the Birgit Nilsson Foun dation to commemorate her centenary, offers an unparalleled wealth of such ac counts) employ the sort of language that would usually be dismissed as hyper bole, or at least demand to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

Not so with Nilsson. When Plácido Domingo describes her as “one of the most magnificent opera singers of all time,” it’s difficult to disagree; Otto Schenk’s as sessment of her as “a true miracle” is just one of many to employ such language. That was a word used also by Harold C. Schonberg in The New York Times in Feb ruary 1980 when Nilsson sang Elektra again at the Met after a five year hiatus. “At an age (62) when most sopranos, much less dramatic sopranos, have long since called it quits,” he went on, “she remains able to pour out an immense vol ume of controlled tone. Her high notes still soar over the loudest climax. She also is able to throttle down to beautiful mezzo forte and piano singing.”

Centenary tributes tend to resort to hagiography. And the tendency is probably even stronger if the subject is an opera singer. In the case of Birgit Nilsson, how ever, the achievements, the qualities—both human and vocal—speak for them selves. Here was a singer whose voice possessed a power, focus, and security the like of which is unlikely ever to be seen again. Here was a performer, moreover, who achieved the extraordinary feat of longevity and total reliability in the most taxing repertoire of all. The fact that these roles tended themselves to encapsu late mythical characters of superhuman strength and steel only blurs the line be tween the artist and what she represented on stage and further underlines her legendary status: for a generation (and for many since listening to recordings) Nilsson simply was and is Brünnhilde, Isolde, Elektra, Turandot.

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Her longevity in such repertoire—and the rocksteadiness that the voice retained— is an achievement that seems to go against all the operatic rules. Nilsson was a

The status of the voice itself as something akin to a force of nature means we risk underestimating Nilsson’s achievement in building a technique to sustain such a phenomenal talent, let alone her sensitivity and intelligence as a musician. Simi larly, Nilsson’s firm belief that her private life should remain just that runs con trary to the opera world’s thirst for scandal—and to a still prevalent view that greatness should be accompanied by flaws, that the brightest stars inevitably burn for the shortest time. Nilsson was married for 57 years, and the nearest thing to scandal in her long professional life came in a few sharp, witty responses to colleagues, usually based on her own perfectly reasonable—and entirely justi fied—sense of her own worth. It was this same justified sense of worth that stood behind her nonnegotiable position when it came to fees: she was unequivocally the best, and deserved the highest level of fee any opera house would offer.

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On one of the few occasions where Nilsson was forced to take time off, in 1968, she gave the official reason as a gall stone operation. The truth—that she needed treatment for cancer—remained unknown until long after she retired from the stage. She hadn’t wanted anyone’s pity, she said, and was back on the stage within four months, her abilities untarnished and without anyone being any the wiser. When she sang Götterdämmerung at the Met with her arm in a sling with a dislocated shoulder in 1974, the New York Magazine hailed her as a “helden soprano”—“It wasn’t only that Nilsson had come from her sickbed,” wrote the critic: “by any standards she gave the greatest performance of her career.”

And how does one sum up in words the magnitude and scope of that career? It’s maybe worth first emphasizing the firmness of the foundation it was built on, foundations laid with patience and perseverance in the face of significant early trials. At the Royal Swedish Academy Nilsson encountered high handed criticism

But she was never satisfied with the way her voice, unique in its power and targeted focus, was captured by the microphones, least of all when producers sought to prioritize the orchestra in the recording balance. Those not lucky enough to have heard the voice in the flesh will no doubt have heard these com mercially successful recordings. But they nonetheless have to rely on imperfect live relays for something closer to the Nilsson reality, or on the eyewitness accounts of others: a state of affairs more familiar with legendary voices of the previous generation.

regular in the recording studio, and several of her key roles are captured in un disputed classics of the gramophone; her Elektra recorded with Solti for DECCA in 1966/1967, for example, or her Brünnhilde for the same combination in the Solti Ring—arguably the most influential and important opera recording of all.

from her teacher, followed by a certain amount of incomprehension regarding the nature and size of her gifts, which she herself had to learn to control with a largely self taught technique. Her stage debut in Stockholm was preceded by hu miliating and lastingly hurtful treatment from the conductor. An attack of tuber culosis in 1952 risked bringing the burgeoning career to a halt.

That fame had been built on a series of breakthrough debuts, among them those in London, Milan, and New York in consecutive years in 1957, 1958, and 1959. Critics tumbled over themselves in each case to bestow superlatives. Her debut at the Royal Opera Convent Garden in 1957 (as Brünnhilde) drew favorable com parisons with such legendary names as Frida Leider and Kirsten Flagstad. At La Scala Nilsson left the famous (and famously intractable) loggionisti united in ad miration after another Brünnhilde in Die Walküre and, especially, with the Turan dot that opened the 1958/1959 season. She was described by the Corriere della

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A glance at the milestones of her early career offers two apparently contradictory impressions: it appears simultaneously to be both steady and meteoric. The first five years were confined to Stockholm, but saw her add one major role after an other to her repertoire. She sang Brünnhilde (in Siegfried ) there as early as 1949, just three years after her debut as Agathe in 1946, but had by that stage already turned 31. The next decade saw the steady conquering of the great opera houses, with her first performances with the Wiener Staatsoper representing an espe cially staggering achievement. The debut in April 1954 (a year before the Haus am Ring opened) was as Sieglinde opposite Max Lorenz’s Siegmund and was followed within the space of nine days by Elsa, Aida and Elisabeth, hastily re learnt in German after it was decided Tannhäuser would replace Fidelio in which Nilsson was to have sung Leonore.

Later the same year she appeared as Senta and Isolde; in a sign of her continuing flexibility and versatility, her debut in the reopened opera house was as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni. It’s a record that sets the mind spinning, and her achieve ments in the house only multiplied during the Karajan era and were soon bol stered, as well as somewhat complicated, by the burgeoning relationship with Solti and DECCA, which began in 1960 with a recording of Tristan und Isolde. Her career at Bayreuth got off to an uncertain start after her 1953 debut when she was caught up in the family politics of Wolfgang and Wieland Wagner, but reached its peak in the latter’s staging of Tristan und Isolde. Nilsson herself ac knowledged the importance in her own broader development of working with Wieland on that Tristan, agreeing with his view that “Nilsson was famous before she was great.” “Yes, I was already famous before Bayreuth,” she said later, “but not great enough. I became still greater under Wieland.”

Metropolitan Opera, New York, Oct. 1968; with Franco Corelli

Nilsson herself looked back to early formative experiences that taught her valu able lessons about her career, her colleagues, and those around her. The support she received from the veteran Max Lorenz for her Wiener Staatsoper debut, for

Sera as offering “a Turandot that would seem unimaginable in our time.” For Nilsson’s New York debut The New York Times found space on its front page: “Birgit Nilsson Conquers ‘Met,’” ran a headline; the article itself added, among a barrage of breathless superlatives: “In a time of limited candidates for the most difficult roles in the repertory, she stands as a dominant figure in the world of op era.” It was a position she would maintain for another twenty plus years.

What made her further stand out was her broad ranging musical education, allied to perfect pitch, a photographic memory, a humility towards her art and a fierce desire constantly to improve. Here was a singer who would restudy the score—the full score, not merely the vocal score—afresh for every performance of Tristan, delving deep in the various complex motivations that drove the character of Isolde. One of her Scarpias, Gabriel Bacquier, remembers watching her in Tosca as providing “a lesson in singing worthy of a musician.” And Nilsson herself pro vided a particularly revealing insight when explaining her attitude towards Puc cini’s heroine. “That she is a great prima donna is not vital to the plot,” she ex plained. “The main thing is her love for Cavaradossi and her acting as a human being.” It’s an assessment that might be adapted to describe Nilsson’s own “Vissi d’arte”—her own life as an artist. That she became a prima donna herself, given her gifts, was inevitable; so too, indeed, that she be remembered as one of the greatest singers of the last century. Maybe it’s appropriate, though, to finish by an assessment of her love of what she did and the human qualities that shine through in any memory of her from colleagues and friends.

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The statistics of Nilsson’s career are one thing: the sheer quantity amounts to an astonishing achievement in terms as much of the number of her performances as the endless stream of famously focused tone she could produce. But these figures, allied to lazy clichés regarding what it means to be a Wagner singer (imagining that all a Brünnhilde needs are decibels and a horned helmet) can lead one to ne glect the broader qualities that were just as essential a part of Nilsson’s armoury. The breadth of her repertoire beyond Wagner should never be forgotten. Her breakthrough performance in Stockholm in 1947 was as Verdi’s Lady Macbeth; her one performance at the Glyndebourne Festival (her first operatic engagement outside Sweden) was as Elletra in Idomeneo. In 1954, the year she sang Salome for the first time, she also made her Munich debut as Aida. And alongside Aida and Turandot, Tosca and Amelia (in Un ballo in maschera) were both important roles—she was captured in all four roles in major studio recordings.

Metropolitan Opera, New York, Feb. 1975

HUGO SHIRLEY

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example. “He gave me courage, helped me, took care of me,” she recalled, “I learned from him what having a really good colleague can mean.” It is clear that this is a lesson she put into practice every time she stepped onto an opera stage, especially with a younger colleague. Mirella Freni recalls encountering Nilsson with trepidation when singing Liù to her Turandot, for example. “Birgit’s warmth and manner put me immediately at ease,” she remembers, in words that we hear again and again from colleagues. And Nilsson’s generosity to her fellow artists extended beyond her retirement, through masterclasses, her Foundation and the Birgit Nilsson Prize, announced posthumously. Nilsson the artist has attained immortality: the unique voice lives on through vivid memories, as well as the im perfect technology that struggles to capture its size and grandeur. A century on, though, the human being lives on through the generosity and example of her legacy.