Wanted to write 'if only the stars of the recent times had the mercy to retire in such a good state as Flagstad here', but such singers are rare that sing in their best years as good as this marvelous lady sang on her FAREWELL concert. Eternal glory!
I remember borrowing this recording's CD from the media library, back in the 90s, in France. At the time, I was just listening to everything I could get my hands on. I remember choosing this CD because it looked like one those "legendary" recordings people talk about. Plus I had heard Mrs Flagstad" name mentioned somewhere. So I took the CD home. After playing other stuff I had borrowed, I put this on in my CD player. Never in a million years had I imagined I would be exposed to such grace, such beauty. And yet there is always a tragic overtone to this cycle. It was as if I had waited my entire life for this. In approximately the same time frame, I also discovered another miraculous work of art. The Vier Letzte Lieder. In my mind, the orchestral Lied is a concentrated form of everything we love in symphonic and lyrical music. This is why it is so powerfully expressive.
John Ruggeri What a cute way of referring to the great singer's age! She sounds like she would be a very young woman in the lighter passages. I believe she worked very hard to learn superb singing and breath support, and that is why her voice lasted so long and retained almost all of its golden sound right to the end. She built her voice up so correctly that it was indestructible!
Considero sua interpretação de “Im Treibhaus” uma das glórias das gravações existentes, entre todas aquelas realizadas, desde o início do século passado.
Wow so this is what actual singing is supposed to sound like. And the orchestra plays with an honest impassioned heart instead of the lying false heart of lacquer and plastic
Wagner and Flagstad define what it is to be human. Anyone embedding commercials in this music defines the inhuman and should be fed to hungry Mako sharks in a televised spectacle, and all money raised therefrom going to opera, poetry, and all other art and artists condemned by New Philistia. Fuckless scumbaggery to slash into Dreams with ads earns Roman, or shall we say Wagnerian punishment.
