Olive Fremstad
Encyclopedia
Olive Fremstad was the stage name of Anna Olivia Rundquist, a celebrated Swedish-American opera diva
who sang in both the mezzo-soprano
and soprano
ranges.
, she was adopted by an American couple living in Minnesota
, taking on their surname of Fremstad. She received her early education and musical training in Christiania
. When she was 12 years of age her parents moved to America, settling in Minneapolis
. Even before leaving Christiania, her progress on the piano had been such that she had appeared as an infant prodigy. She began her vocal training in New York
with Frederick Bristol
in 1890 after singing in church choirs, then studied in Berlin
with Lilli Lehmann
before making her operatic debut as a mezzo-soprano as Azucena
in Verdi's Il trovatore
at the Cologne
Opera in 1895. She remained there for at least three years, before going on to Vienna
, Munich
, Bayreuth
and London
.
in New York
from 1903 until 1914, specializing in Wagnerian 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 Tannhäuser
, 'Kundry' in Parsifal
, 'Sieglinde', 'Isolde' and 'Elsa' in Lohengrin
. American audiences never warmed much to her interpretation of the title role in Bizet's Carmen
, but she had sung the role opposite Enrico Caruso in San Francisco the night before the city was wrecked by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
and ensuing fire. (She and Caruso escaped the disaster unharmed.)
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 examination of a dissected human head preserved in a jar. She was mystified when her few students fled in horror, unwilling to study the human larynx
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 herself this wasn't anything special; when studying for the role of Salome
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 John the Baptist
.
Her output of recordings is meager. She made approximately 40 recordings between 1911 and 1915, only 15 of which were ever released. Music critic J.B. Steane
has called Fremstad "one of the greatest of Wagnerians". ; but in his The Record of Singing, Volume 1, the opera historian Michael Scott
describes her as always being more of a mezzo-soprano than a genuine soprano. Scott, however, acknowledges her impressive qualities as an interpretive artist.
Fremstad allegedly professed to have no interest in romantic entanglements. However, she wed twice, with both marriages ending in divorce, and also lived for some time in a couple with her secretary, Mary Watkins Cushing. She died in Irvington, New York
. She was buried, however, alongside her parents in a family plot in the village cemetery in Grantsburg, Wisconsin
.
Fremstad was the model for Thea Kronborg, the heroine of Willa Cather
's novel The Song of the Lark
. Her relationship with Cushing was fictionalized in the novel Of Lena Geyer, by Marcia Davenport
.
Diva
A diva is a celebrated female singer. The term is used to describe a woman of outstanding talent in the world of opera, and, by extension, in theatre, cinema and popular music. The meaning of diva is closely related to that of "prima donna"....
who sang in both the mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
and soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
ranges.
Background
Born in StockholmStockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, she was adopted by an American couple living in Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
, taking on their surname of Fremstad. She received her early education and musical training in Christiania
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
. When she was 12 years of age her parents moved to America, settling in Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
. Even before leaving Christiania, her progress on the piano had been such that she had appeared as an infant prodigy. She began her vocal training in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
with Frederick Bristol
Frederick Bristol
Frederick E. Bristol was a celebrated American voice teacher who operated a private studios in Boston and New York City during the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century. He began teaching singing in 1869 and the 60th anniversary of his teaching career was recognized by an article...
in 1890 after singing in church choirs, then studied in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
with Lilli Lehmann
Lilli Lehmann
Lilli Lehmann, born Elisabeth Maria Lehmann, later Elisabeth Maria Lehmann-Kalisch was a German operatic soprano of phenomenal versatility...
before making her operatic debut as a mezzo-soprano as Azucena
Azucena
Azucena is a Venezuelan telenovela that was produced by and seen on Venezuela's Radio Caracas Televisión. It was written by María Antonieta Gómez and Édgar Mejías, and directed by Tito Rojas...
in Verdi's Il trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
at the Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
Opera in 1895. She remained there for at least three years, before going on to Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, Bayreuth
Bayreuth Festspielhaus
The or Bayreuth Festival Theatre is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, dedicated solely to the performance of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Career
She appeared at the Metropolitan OperaMetropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
from 1903 until 1914, specializing in Wagnerian 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 Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (opera)
Tannhäuser is an opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on the two German legends of Tannhäuser and the song contest at Wartburg...
, 'Kundry' in Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
, 'Sieglinde', 'Isolde' and 'Elsa' in Lohengrin
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...
. American audiences never warmed much to her interpretation of the title role in Bizet's Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, but she had sung the role opposite Enrico Caruso in San Francisco the night before the city was wrecked by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was a major earthquake that struck San Francisco, California, and the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. The most widely accepted estimate for the magnitude of the earthquake is a moment magnitude of 7.9; however, other...
and ensuing fire. (She and Caruso escaped the disaster unharmed.)
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 examination of a dissected human head preserved in a jar. She was mystified when her few students fled in horror, unwilling to study the human larynx
Larynx
The larynx , commonly called the voice box, is an organ in the neck of amphibians, reptiles and mammals involved in breathing, sound production, and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. It manipulates pitch and volume...
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 herself this wasn't anything special; when studying for the role of Salome
Salome (opera)
Salome is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by the composer, based on Hedwig Lachmann’s German translation of the French play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer....
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 John the Baptist
John the Baptist
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
.
Her output of recordings is meager. She made approximately 40 recordings between 1911 and 1915, only 15 of which were ever released. Music critic J.B. Steane
J.B. Steane
John Barry Steane was an English music critic, musicologist, literary scholar and teacher, with a particular interest in singing and the human voice...
has called Fremstad "one of the greatest of Wagnerians". ; but in his The Record of Singing, Volume 1, the opera historian Michael Scott
Michael Scott (artistic director)
Michael Scott is the founder of the London Opera Society. In his role as the society's sole artistic director, he brought to London Marilyn Horne, Joan Sutherland, and Boris Christoff. He was also responsible for introducing Sherrill Milnes, Ruggero Raimondi, and Montserrat Caballe...
describes her as always being more of a mezzo-soprano than a genuine soprano. Scott, however, acknowledges her impressive qualities as an interpretive artist.
Fremstad allegedly professed to have no interest in romantic entanglements. However, she wed twice, with both marriages ending in divorce, and also lived for some time in a couple with her secretary, Mary Watkins Cushing. She died in Irvington, New York
Irvington, New York
Irvington, sometimes known as Irvington-on-Hudson, is an affluent suburban village in the town of Greenburgh in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, north of midtown Manhattan in New York City, and is served by a station stop on the...
. She was buried, however, alongside her parents in a family plot in the village cemetery in Grantsburg, Wisconsin
Grantsburg, Wisconsin
Grantsburg is a village in Burnett County in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 1,369 at the 2000 census. The village is located within the Town of Grantsburg.-Claim to fame:...
.
Fremstad was the model for Thea Kronborg, the heroine of Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
's novel The Song of the Lark
The Song of the Lark
The Song of the Lark is the third novel by American author Willa Cather, written in 1915. The title comes from a painting of the same name by Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton.-Plot introduction:...
. Her relationship with Cushing was fictionalized in the novel Of Lena Geyer, by Marcia Davenport
Marcia Davenport
Marcia Davenport was an American author and music critic. She was born Marcia Glick in New York City on June 9, 1903, the daughter of Bernard Glick and the opera singer Alma Gluck, and she became the stepdaughter of violinist Efrem Zimbalist when Alma Gluck remarried.Davenport traveled extensively...
.
Other sources
- Cushing, Mary Fitch Watkins The Rainbow Bridge, a biography of Olive Fremstad (G. P. Putnam's SonsG. P. Putnam's SonsG. P. Putnam's Sons was a major United States book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group.-History:...
, 1954) Library of Congress Catalog card number 54:10494 - Rosenthal, H. and Warrack, J. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera(2nd Edition, Oxford University Press. pp. 180-181. 1979))
- Steane, J.B., The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record (Charles Scribner's SonsCharles Scribner's SonsCharles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
, 1974) - Scott, Michael, The Record of Singing, Volume 1 (Duckworth, London, 1977)