Isolde at La Scala

Neither Kirsten Flagstad nor the Italian cops knew what to expect. In Milan last week 200 plainclothesmen were sprinkled through the audience in famed La Scala opera house, and outside, strong police squads stood ready. There had been hints of trouble. The former chief of staff of the Milanese partisan organization demanded that the performance of Tristan und Isolde be canceled. He objected not to Soprano Flagstad's much-criticized war reputation--but to the fact that the opera would be sung in German.

It was Kirsten Flagstad's first appearance in opera since the war and she was nervous. She had been widely attacked because her husband (who died last June) had been arrested as a quisling; and she had been criticized because she had gone home to him (from the U.S.) after Norway was occupied. But there were increasing numbers of people who only cared that Kirsten Flagstad was a great singer. Some of them had heard her at first with reticence and then with applause in postwar concerts at Cannes, Paris and London. Many more of the same kind of folk were on hand at La Scala when the first notes of Tristan und Isolde sighed from the orchestra pit.

It was a great night. In the pit, Conductor Victor de Sabata had critics going back to Toscanini for comparisons. And on stage, 51-year-old Kirsten Flagstad, who had never before sung at the Milan opera house, thrilled the audience with the range, clarity and richness of her tones. Cried one critic: "This performance will go down in the annals as one of La Scala's greatest."

Kirsten Flagstad, one of the greatest of all Wagnerian sopranos, had about completed her comeback. Her manager was already lining up twelve U.S. engagements, had found that while some cities (e.g., Minneapolis) no longer wanted to hear Flagstad, many others, such as Boston, Chicago and Milwaukee, did. No recital was scheduled for New York. The Metropolitan Opera, whose season is about over anyway, waited to see how the rest of the U.S. reacted to its former star.

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