1951 Wagner Ring Flagstad Svanholm Frick Shacklock Raisbeck Rothmueller CG opera

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Seller: pelleaz ✉️ (3,439) 100%, Location: London, GB, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 122363170733 1951 Wagner Ring Flagstad Svanholm Frick Shacklock Raisbeck Rothmueller CG opera.

1951 Wagner Ring Flagstad Svanholm Frick Shacklock Raisbeck Rothmueller CG opera

1951 Wagner Ring Flagstad Svanholm Frick Shacklock Raisbeck Rothmueller CG opera

Original printed opera programme for a 1951 performance of Twilight of the Gods , with Flagstad as Brünnhilde, and Svanholm as Siegfried, conducted by Rankl + press cutting with review : 'With the greatest Brünnhilde of our generation… it soared to something higher… as dramatic as any… in the memory… in superb form… radiance… the intelligence of Mr. Set Svanholm's Siegfried… Dr. Rankl has done nothing better… than this cycle of The Ring' Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London 25 May 1949 Wagner Götterdämmerung [Der Ring des Nibelungen] Cast : Constance Shacklock , Barbara Howitt, Rosina Raisbeck (Third Norn and Wellgunde), Kirsten Flagstad , Set Svanholm , Marko Rothmuller , Gottlob Frick , Sylvia Fisher, Edith Coates , Otakar Kraus, Audrey Bowman, Monica Sinclair Conductor : Karl Rankl Producer : Friedrich Schramm Plot synopsis Condition : Good. Light wear to covers, edges, a few minor marks I will package carefully and am happy to post worldwide : UK £1.25, Europe £4, Worldwide £5 Postage combined and reduced for multiple purchases posted together program programs programm programmheft Please see also my other classical concert & opera programmes From Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia Kirsten Målfrid Flagstad (12 July 1895 – 7 December 1962) was a Norwegian opera singer and a highly regarded Wagnerian (dramatic) soprano. She ranks among the greatest singers of the 20th century; indeed, many opera critics called hers "the voice of the century." To quote Desmond Shawe-Taylor in New Grove Dictionary of Opera: "No one within living memory surpassed her in sheer beauty and consistency of line and tone." Early life and career Role photo. Kirsten Flagstad as Aida in Aida, opera by Giuseppe Verdi. Stora Teatern, Göteborg, Role debut 7 March 1929. Flagstad was born in Hamar in her grandparents' home. Though she never actually lived in Hamar, she always considered it her home town. She was raised in Oslo within a musical family; her father was a conductor and her mother a pianist. She received her early musical training in Oslo and made her stage debut at the National Theatre in Oslo as Nuri in Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland in 1913. Her first recordings were made between 1913 and 1915. After further study in Stockholm with Dr. Gillis Bratt, she pursued a career in opera and operetta in Norway. In 1919, she married her first husband Sigurd Hall and a year later gave birth to her only child, a daughter, Else Marie Hall. Later that year she signed up with the newly created Opera Comique in Oslo, under the direction of Alexander Varnay and Benno Singer. Varnay was the father of the famous soprano Astrid Varnay. Her ability to learn roles quickly was noted, as it often took her only a few days to do so. She sang Desdemona opposite Leo Slezak, Minnie, Amelia and other lesser roles at the Opera Comique. She sang at the Stora Theater of Göteborg, Sweden, between 1928 and 1934. Flagstad made her debut there singing Agathe in Der Freischütz by Weber. In 1930, a revival of Carl Nielsen's Saul and David featured Flagstad singing the role of Michal. On 31 May 1930 she married her second husband, the Norwegian industrialist and lumber merchant Henry Johansen, who subsequently helped her in expanding her career. In 1932 she made her debut in Rodelinda by George Frideric Handel. After singing operetta and lyric roles such as Marguerite in Faust for over a decade, Flagstad decided to take on heavier operatic roles such as Tosca and Aida. The part of Aida helped to unleash Flagstad's dramatic abilities. In 1932, she took on the role of Isolde in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and appeared to have found her true voice. Ellen Gulbranson (1863–1946), a Norwegian soprano at Bayreuth, convinced Winifred Wagner to audition Flagstad for the Bayreuth Festival. Flagstad sang minor roles in 1933, but at the next season in 1934, she sang the roles of Sieglinde in Die Walküre and Gutrune in Götterdämmerung at the Festival, opposite Frida Leider as Brunnhilde. Career at the Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere Flagstad was first noticed by Otto Hermann Kahn, then Chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Opera, on a trip to Scandinavia in 1929, and Met management made overtures soon after. Their letters were never answered, however. At the time, Flagstad had just met her soon to be 2nd husband and had even briefly considered giving up opera altogether. Then, in the summer of 1934, when the Met needed a replacement for Frida Leider, Flagstad agreed to audition for conductor Artur Bodanzky and Met general manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza in St. Moritz in August 1934, and she was engaged immediately. Upon leaving St Mortiz, Bodanzky's parting words for Flagstad were "Come to New York as soon as you know these roles (Isolde, the 3 Brunnhildes, Leonore in Fidelio, and Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier). And above all do not go and get fat! Your slender, youthful figure is not the least reason you were engaged." Flagstad's debut at the Met, as Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre on the afternoon of February 2, 1935, created a sensation, though it was not planned as a special event. By this time, after weeks of rehearsals, Met management already knew what they had, but they nonetheless decided on a low key debut. Flagstad was unknown in the United States at the time. The performance was, however, broadcast nationwide on the Met's weekly syndicated radio program, and the first inkling of the deluge of critical praise to come was given when intermission host and former Met star Geraldine Farrar discarded her prepared notes, overwhelmed by what she had just heard, and breathlessly announced that a new star had just been born. Days later, Flagstad sang Isolde, and later that month, she performed Brünnhilde in Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung for the first time. Before the end of the season, Flagstad sang Elsa in Lohengrin, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, and her first Kundry in Parsifal. Almost overnight, she had established herself as the pre-eminent Wagnerian soprano of the era. According to most critics, she still remains the supreme Wagnerian dramatic soprano on disc by virtue of her unique voice. It has been said that she saved the Metropolitan Opera from looming bankruptcy. Her performances, sometimes 3 or 4 a week in her early days at the Met, quickly sold out at the box office as soon as they went on sale. Her services to the Met were not from box office receipts alone; her nationwide personal appeals to radio listeners during Saturday matinee intermissions brought thousands of dollars in donations to the Met's coffers. Fidelio (1936 and later) was her only non-Wagnerian role at the Met before the war. In 1935, she performed all three Brünnhildes in the San Francisco Opera's Ring cycle. In 1937, she first appeared at the Chicago City Opera Company. In 1936 and 1937, Flagstad performed the roles of Isolde, Brünnhilde, and Senta at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, under Sir Thomas Beecham, Fritz Reiner and Wilhelm Furtwängler, arousing as much enthusiasm there as she had in New York. She also toured Australia in 1938. Hollywood also tried to cash in on Flagstad fever, after her sudden popularity in the US in the mid 1930's, with her many appearances on NBC Radio, The Kraft Music Hall with Bing Crosby, and regular appearances on CBS's The Ford Sunday Evening Hour. Though Flagstad was not interested in stardom or Hollywood contracts per se, she did make trips to Hollywood during the late 1930s for publicity photo shoots, public appearances, concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, and she filmed a rendition of Brünnhilde's Battle Cry from Wagner's Die Walküre for the Hollywood variety show anthology The Big Broadcast of 1938, in which she was introduced to American film audiences by Bob Hope. Flagstad is one of two Norwegians, along with Sonia Henie, to have her own star on Hollywood's walk of fame. Her career at the Met, however, was not without its ups-and-downs. Flagstad got involved in a long-running feud with tenor co-star Lauritz Melchior after Melchior took offense to some comments Flagstad made about "stupid publicity photos" during a game of bridge in Flagstad's hotel suite while the two were on tour together in Rochester, NY. Present during the infamous bridge game were Flagstad, Melchior and his wife, and Edwin McArthur. Afterwards, Melchior fanned the flames further by insisting that there be no solo curtain calls for Flagstad when the two performed together. Audiences had no clue that, despite the marvelous and sometimes historic performances, the two never said a word to each other off stage for the next two years. It was Flagstad's husband Henry Johansen who finally brought the two together to make peace. Flagstad also feuded with the Met's general manager, Edward Johnson, after conductor Artur Bodanzky's death, when she asked to be conducted for a few performances by her accompanist, Edwin McArthur, rather than by the Met's new conductor Erich Leinsdorf. Flagstad had wanted this for McArthur, whom she had taken under her wing. Johnson refused and would not hear of it any further. Flagstad did get her way, though; she went over Johnson's head and discussed the matter with the Met's board of directors, particularly David Sarnoff, RCA and NBC founder and chairman. It was Sarnoff who made the arrangements for McArthur to begin conducting Met productions on a limited basis. Her relationship with Johnson improved, however; just before Flagstad left the Met in 1941, on the night of her 100th performance of Tristan, she received 100 roses, courtesy of Melchior and Johnson. Having received repeated and cryptic cablegrams from her husband, who had returned to Norway a year and a half earlier, Flagstad was forced to consider leaving the United States in 1941. Though unaware of the political implications of the departure of someone of her fame from the United States to German-occupied Norway, it was nonetheless a difficult decision for her. She had many friends, colleagues, and of course many fans all over the USA. Even more importantly, her 20-year old daughter Else had married an American named Arthur Dusenberry and was living with her new husband on a dude ranch in Bozeman, Montana. It was Edwin McArthur who gave the bride away at the wedding in Bozeman a year earlier. Nonetheless, against the best advice of her friends and colleagues, including former president Herbert Hoover, who pleaded with her during a lunch the two had together to stay out of Europe, she returned to Norway via Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Marseille, and Berlin in April, 1941. Though she only performed during the war in Sweden and Switzerland, countries unoccupied by German forces, this fact did not temper the storm of public opinion that hurt her personally and professionally for the next several years. Her husband was arrested after the war for war-time profiteering in German-occupied Norway that involved his lumber business. This arrest, together with her decision to remain in occupied Norway, made her unpopular, particularly in the United States. The Norwegian ambassador and the columnist Walter Winchell spoke out against her. In 1948, she performed several benefit concerts for the United Jewish Appeal. In defense of Flagstad's husband, Henry Johansen, it should be noted that facts surfaced after his death that showed that he was arrested by the German Gestapo during the occupation and was released after 8 days. It then came to light, many years later, that Johansen's son by his first marriage, Henry Jr, had been a member of the Norwegian underground throughout World War 2. Later career Flagstad eventually returned to the Metropolitan Opera, invited by its new general manager, Rudolf Bing, who was furiously criticized for this choice: "The greatest soprano of this century must sing in the world's greatest opera house", he replied. She also returned to Covent Garden following its reopening in 1947 (a rare exception- the Opera House, in lean financial straits following the war-time closure, was attempting to build up a house company of English nationals, principally singing in English, in preference to expensive guest stars), singing in four consecutive seasons from 1948 to 1952 in all her regular Wagnerian roles, including Kundry and Sieglinde. She toured South America in 1948 and returned to San Francisco in 1949, and finally returned to the Met . In the 1950-1951 season, although she was aged well into her 50s, Flagstad showed herself still in remarkable form as Isolde, Brünnhilde and Leonore. Despite the great fanfare surrounding her return to the Met in early 1951, and her success in resuming her roles there, Flagstad decided that it would be her final year singing Wagner on the stage. She had gained quite a bit of weight since her pre-war years at the Met when she sang those long and physically demanding roles night after night. In 1950, when she accepted Bing's invitation, she felt she did not have the stamina she had had as a younger woman. She had also developed an arthritic hip in mid 1951 and had consulted doctors in NY; this further made the operatic stage, especially when singing Wagner, difficult for her. She gave her farewell operatic performance at the Met on 1 April 1952, not as Brunnhilde or Isolde but in the title role of Gluck's Alceste, a role she had learnt in the war years in Norway. In London she appeared as Dido (another recently learnt role) in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at the Mermaid Theatre (in the 1951 Festival of Britain season): the portrayal was recorded (in studio), and issued by EMI in January 1953 (see: Recordings). Her last operatic appearance was as Dido in Oslo on June 5, 1953. During the post-war years, Flagstad was also responsible for the world premiere of Richard Strauss's "Vier letzte Lieder". Strauss had written the pieces during his exile in Switzerland following WWII (like Flagstad, he had been vilified as a collaborator with the Nazis), and intended them to be premiered by Flagstad - less because he had her voice in mind (the songs are better suited to the lyic soprano voice he idealised throughout his life, as exemplified by Elisabeth Schumann and ultimately his wife Pauline; Strauss, moreover, had heard praise for Flagstad over the years, but had not heard her sing in person since casting her as the soprano soloist in the 1933 Bayreuth Festival performance of the Beethoven Choral Symphony), more out of sympathy for her difficulties. He sent to Flagstad a letter, accompanied by a collection of his own works which he desired her to consider adding to her repertoire, and requested that she give the premiere - together with "a first-class conductor and ensemble" - of the four recently written orchestral lieder, at that point still in the publication process. Flagstad accepted the commission, although Strauss did not live to see the premiere; as a conductor, she chose not McArthur (who, though an excellent piano accompanist, was not considered a ‘first-class’ orchestral conductor) but Wilhelm Furtwangler (also experiencing the repercussions of suspect wartime conduct), and the pair chose Walter Legge’s Philharmonia Orchestra, with which they both worked well, to provide the accompaniment. By the time of the premiere, 22 May 1950, Flagstad was almost 55 years old. Her voice by this point was darker, heavier, and more inflexible than when she had sung for Strauss at Bayreuth, and she was becoming reluctant to venture above the stave, as would be notoriously demonstrated in the recording of ‘’Tristan’’ two years later; the Strauss songs, particularly the Heine settings, were thus not ideally suited to her resources, and she found herself tested to her limits. Fruhling, indeed, gave such trouble that Legge, in promoting the concert, was two days before the event advertising the Strauss as “three songs with orchestra”. In the event, Flagstad rose to the occasion and included Fruhling (with, however, several downward transpositions), and the close of ‘’Im Abendrot’’ was followed by a respectful silence in memory of Strauss. The concert, which aside from the Strauss songs consisted of Wagner (including Isolde’s Liebestod and Brunnhilde’s Immolation), received favourable reviews; recordings of Flagstad’s contributions were made from the radio broadcast, and are today commercially available. Flagstad proceeded to add ‘’September’’, ‘’Beim Schlafengehen’’, and ‘’Im Abendrot’’ to her repertoire, and recordings (technologically superior to those taken at the premiere) exist of these performed in concert; she did not, however, venture ‘’Fruhling’’ again. After her retirement from the stage, she continued to give concert performances and record – first for EMI (setting down her definitive account of Isolde in the first commercially released account of ‘’Tristan’’), and then for Decca Records. She even made some stereophonic recordings, including excerpts from Wagner's operas with Hans Knappertsbusch and Sir Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1958, she sang the part of Fricka in Wagner's Das Rheingold, the first instalment in Solti's complete stereophonic set of the Ring Cycle, released by Decca on LP and reel-to-reel tape. She also spent time mentoring young singers in her native country, including contralto Eva Gustavson. From around 1952 when she gave her Met farewell until she died 10 years later, Flagstad's health steadily deteriorated. She was in and out of hospitals on an increasing basis both in the number and the length of her stays for a variety of ailments. She even joked with an interviewer in 1958 that Oslo hospital had become her home away from home. From 1958 to 1960, Flagstad was the first Director of the Norwegian National Opera. In her last years she gave many benefit concerts throughout Norway. She was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer in 1960 and died of the disease on Dec 7th, 1962. At her own request she was buried in an unmarked grave in Vestre Gravlund Cemetery in the Frogner borough of Oslo. The largest floral arrangement at her funeral was sent by none other than Lauritz Melchior. Legacy The Kirsten Flagstad Museum in Hamar, Norway, contains a private collection of opera artifacts. Her costumes draw special attention, and include several examples on loan from the Metropolitan Opera Archives. Her portrait appears on the Norwegian 100 kroner bill and on the tail section of Norwegian Air Shuttle planes. "That voice! How can one describe it?" wrote opera critic Harold Schonberg in his New York Times obituary of Flagstad. "It was enormous, but did not sound enormous because it was never pushed or out of placement. It had a rather cool silvery quality, and was handled instrumentally, almost as though a huge violin was emitting legato phrases." Incredibly, Flagstad sang the role of Isolde 70 times on the Met stage from 1935 to 1941, nine of those performances were Saturday matinee radio broadcasts, making Tristan und Isolde one of the greatest box office attractions in Metropolitan Opera history. Recordings Of her many recordings, the complete Tristan und Isolde with Furtwängler is considered the finest representation of her interpretive art in its maturity. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest recordings of all time. Throughout her career she recorded numerous songs, by Grieg and others, and these are evidence of a voice that maintained its stable beauty during her many years in the limelight. A comprehensive survey of her recordings was released in several volumes on the Simax label. Her pre-war recordings, which show her voice in its freshest brilliance and clarity, include studio recordings of Wagner arias, Beethoven arias, and Grieg songs, as well as duets from Lohengrin, Parsifal, and Tristan und Isolde with Lauritz Melchior. These have been (and probably still are) available on RCA/BMG CDs, as well as on good CD transfers from the Naxos, Preiser and Romophone companies. Many Metropolitan Opera broadcasts also survive and have circulated among collectors and more recently on CD. These include: Die Walküre, Act I and fragments from Act II from her 1935 début broadcast; 1937 (as Sieglinde); 1940. Tristan und Isolde, performances from 1935, 1937, and 1940 all readily available. Tannhäuser: 1936, with Melchior and Tibbett, 1939, and 1941 (the latter having an official release on Metropolitan Opera LPs). Siegfried: 1937, with Lauritz Melchior and Friedrich Schorr (available on Naxos and Guild labels). Lohengrin: 1937, with René Maison Fidelio: 1941 with Bruno Walter (available on Naxos) Alceste: 1952 (available on Walhall) After World War II, many important studio recordings followed including: Wagner Scenes including the final duet from Siegfried (Testament CDs, licensed from EMI) Götterdämmerung: Final Scene, with Furtwängler - EMI Tristan und Isolde: Complete opera with Furtwängler - EMI Norwegian Songs: EMI Götterdämmerung: with Fjeldstad and Bjoner and Set Svanholm. 1956 - Urania and Walhall. Der Ring des Nibelungen: Gebhard. From Teatro alla Scala with Furtwängler, Lorenz, Svanholm, Frantz. 1950 Perhaps her most famous operatic recording is the 1952 Tristan with Furtwängler, which has never been out of print. It is available from EMI and Naxos, among others. Another Tristan of note is the live performance from the Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires), with Viorica Ursuleac as Brangäne, Set Svanholm as Tristan, Hans Hotter as Kurvenal, conducted by Erich Kleiber. Two live concerts are of particular historical significance: Four Last Songs (Richard Strauss, world premiere), with excerpts from ‘’Tristan and Isolde’’ and ‘’Gotterdammerung’’, (Philharmonia Orchestra, cond. Wilhelm Furtwängler), London 22 May 1950. (Testament) Carnegie Hall American farewell concert (Symphony of the Air, cond. McArthur), 20 March 1955. (Includes Die Walküre Act I excerpts; Götterdämmerung final scene, Tristan Liebestod, and Wesendonck Lieder (orchestral version).) (World Records LP T-366-7.) Flagstad's celebrated 1951 appearance at the Mermaid Theatre, London in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas is represented by a cast recording in which the Mermaid Belinda (Maggie Teyte) was replaced by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, but under the original direction of Geraint Jones. (HMV ALP 1026, EMG review January 1953). A live performance with Teyte is available on the Walhall label. The Alceste (original Italian version edited by Geraint Jones) in which she also made a farewell was recorded with Raoul Jobin, Alexander Young, Marion Lowe, Thomas Hemsley, Joan Clark, Rosemary Thayer, Geraint Jones Orchestra and singers, Geraint Jones (Decca LP LXT 5273-5276;. c. 1952) In 1956, she moved to Decca where in the autumn of her career further important studio recordings followed: Several albums of Grieg, Sibelius, Brahms, etc., with orchestra and piano Wagner arias with Knappertsbusch (stereo) Acts I and III of Die Walküre (as Sieglinde and Brünnhilde respectively) as well as the Brünnhilde/Siegmund duet from Act II (these conducted variously by Knappertsbusch and Solti, as a sort of preparation for Decca's complete Ring project). And her great valedictory as Fricka in the Decca Rheingold of 1958. Almost to the end of her life, Flagstad continued to sing in fine voice, although she increasingly sang Mezzo-Soprano material or in a Mezzo range: besides the Rheingold Fricka (a Mezzo role), Decca planned to cast her also as the Walkure Fricka and the Gotterdammerung Waltraute for its complete Ring (in the event, the roles were sung by Christa Ludwig), and also to record her in Brahms’ ‘’Four Serious Songs’’ and Alto Rhapsody; that these plans were shelved only by her final illness and death stands as a testament to her superbly consistent vocal abilities, and to the respect and affection in which she was held to the end by record companies and the public. Set Svanholm (2 September 1904 – 4 October 1964) was a Swedish operatic tenor, considered the leading Tristan and Siegfried of the first decade following World War II. Svanholm began his musical career at the age of 17 as a precentor, elementary school teacher, and organist. He then studied at the Royal University College of Music in Stockholm as well as taking singing lessons from John Forsell, who also taught Aksel Schiøtz and Jussi Björling. He made his operatic debut as a baritone (Stockholm, 1930), singing the role of Silvio in Pagliacci. He sang as a baritone for several years. Then in 1936, after further study, he debuted as a tenor, singing the role of Radamès in Aida. His first Wagnerian tenor roles (Lohengrin and Siegfried) followed in 1937. Svanholm sang regularly at the New York Metropolitan Opera (1946-1956), the Vienna State Opera (1938-42), and The Royal Opera House in London (1948-57). He became the director of the Royal Swedish Opera in 1956, a post he held until 1963. Phyllis Rosina Raisbeck MBE (28 July 1916 – 23 December 2006) was an Australian opera and concert mezzo-soprano singer. Her fine voice was basically a dramatic mezzo, with a warm middle register supporting strong top notes. Biography Rosina Raisbeck was born Ballarat, Victoria on 28 July 1916 but grew up in Maitland and Newcastle, New South Wales. In 1942 she began vocal studies at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in Sydney, where she worked for five years. During that period she sang with the opera school in Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann and in 1944 she took part in the first performance of The Pearl Tree by Edgar Bainton, the English composer who was director of the conservatorium. The Pearl Tree, though written many years previously, was given a glowing review by Neville Cardus in the Sydney Morning Herald. She ended her studies in 1946 by winning the Australian Broadcasting Commission's Concerto and Vocal Competition, and the Sun Aria Competition. After a concert tour of New Zealand, Raisbeck sailed for London with her husband James Laurie, whom she had married in 1943. A letter of recommendation from Eugene Goossens, newly appointed Director of the Conservatory, obtained her an audition at the recently formed Covent Garden Opera Company (now the Royal Opera) and she made her début as Maddalena in Verdi's Rigoletto, later singing such roles as Flora in La traviata, Second Lady in Mozart's The Magic Flute, Mercedes in Bizet's Carmen, Wellgunde in Wagner's Das Rheingold and Rossweisse in Die Walküre. Advised by the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham to become a soprano, Raisbeck studied with the tenor Dino Borgioli and from 1950 onwards she added Ortrud in Lohengrin, Senta in The Flying Dutchman, Third Norn in Götterdämmerung (all by Wagner), and First Lady in The Magic Flute to her repertory. Raisbeck was a tall, imposing woman and managed to appear the very embodiment of evil in that role. She often sang alongside her fellow Australian Kenneth Neate. After leaving Covent Garden in 1953, she sang frequently in concert, and was one of the huge choir at Westminster Abbey that sang during the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Raisbeck planned to tour Australia the following year with Benjamin Fuller's Italian Opera, but, finding that she was pregnant, cancelled the tour. After her son was born, she did not sing again until 1958, when she gave guest performances of Ortrud and the title role of Beethoven's Fidelio with the Elizabethan Trust Opera Company in Sydney. Returning to London she sang with Sadler's Wells Opera in 1959, as Senta, and Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, as well as the Mother in the British premiere of Luigi Dallapiccola's The Prisoner, given by the New Opera Company at Sadler's Wells. In 1961, she gave a dramatic performance of Kabanisha in Leoš Janáček's Káťa Kabanová. Then, having divorced her husband, she returned to Australia with her son. For the next 10 years, Raisbeck sang wherever and whatever she could: a tremendously successful production of The Sound of Music, in which she sang the Abbess, with June Bronhill as Maria, was followed by Carousel. She gave concerts, and she sang in clubs and cabaret. Then in 1969 the Elizabethan Trust evolved into the Australian Opera; Raisbeck sang with the company from 1971 for the rest of her career. Her first role was Marcellina in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, followed by Akhrosimova in Prokofiev's War and Peace (1973; the first opera performed at the Sydney Opera House); she scored triumphs as Mrs Begbick in Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1975) and as Herodias in Richard Strauss's Salome (1976). Raisbeck had sung in all three of the operas making up Puccini's Il trittico - as La Frugola in Il tabarro, as the Princess in Suor Angelica and as Zita in Gianni Schicchi - soon after joining the Australian Opera. In 1977, she sang the Princess again, opposite Joan Sutherland as Suor Angelica. The Duchess of Plaza Toro in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers and the Countess in Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades were both successful; so was Kabanisha (1980). Raisbeck's career ended officially in 1985 with a much-admired performance of the First Prioress in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. She sang on for another three years, finally retiring in 1988, aged 72. She died on 23 December 2006, after a long illness. Honours Rosina Raisbeck was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1977 New Years Honours. Constance Shacklock OBE (b Sherwood, Nottinghamshire, 1913; d London, 1999) was an English contralto whose career took off after she was recruited in 1946 to the nascent New Covent Garden Opera Company. Despite her inexperience within the operatic arena, in 1948 she was cast as Brangane in Tristan and Isolde alongside the celebrated Norwegian soprano, Kirsten Flagstad. This role, together with Octavian, from Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, was to become her most successful. In 1956, Shacklock left the operatic stage and joined the cast of The Sound of Music for a six year run as the Mother Abbess at the Palace Theatre, London. She retired from singing and taught singing at the Royal Academy of Music, London. Notable students were the British opera singers Kathryn Harries and Victoria Burmester. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1971 and became president of the Association of Teachers of Singing in 1995. Shacklock was married to Eric Mitchell in 1947 (died 1965) and is survived by a daughter, the mezzo-soprano, Jean Tredaway. The eponymous Constance Close in Kingston Vale, Surrey, was created on the site of her residence in her memory. Obituary in the Independent by Elizabeth Forbes http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-constance-shacklock-1103492.html Edith Coates OBE (31 May 1908 – 7 January 1983) was an English operatic mezzo-soprano. A highly gifted actress with a striking stage presence, Coates initially found success in larger dramatic roles before transitioning into portraying mainly character parts in the 1950s. She began her career with Lilian Baylis's opera company at the Old Vic in 1924. She stayed with the company when it moved to the Sadler's Wells Theatre and remained with them up through 1946. Coates career was put on hold while the London stages were closed during World War II. There is no doubt that the war limited her career as it occurred during her prime singing years; though she was also said not to have been excessively ambitious. In 1947 Coates joined the Royal Opera, London where she remained until her retirement from the stage in 1967. Biography Coates studied singing with Ethel Henry Bird at the Trinity College of Music in London and later with Clive Carey, Dawson Freer and Dino Borgioli. She began her career in 1924 with the Vic Wells Opera, first as a member of the chorus and then in smaller roles. When the company moved to the Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1931 she became the company's leading mezzo-soprano, notably singing in the UK premieres of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden (as Lel) and Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan (as Tkachikha) in 1933. She also had a tremendous success with the company as Princess Eboli in Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos in 1937. On June 7, 1945 she portrayed Auntie in the world premiere of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes at the Sadler's Wells Theatre. In 1937 Coates made her Covent Garden debut, but did not become a member of the company until a decade later. In 1947 she returned to the house to portray the title role in Georges Bizet's Carmen in the company's first full-scale production since the house was closed during World War II. She remained a member of the Royal Opera for the next two decades, initially portraying leading roles like Azucena in Il trovatore, Fricka in Die Walküre, and Amneris in Aida. She eventually gravitated to character roles in the 1950s. While at the Royal Opera, Coates notably sang in several world premieres, including Madame Bardeau in Arthur Bliss's The Olympians (1949), the Housewife in Britten's Gloriana (1953), and the She-Ancient in Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage (1955). She was also highly praised for her performance of the Countess in the first English-language production of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades (1950). She later portrayed 'Grandma' in the world premiere of Grace Williams’s The Parlour at the Welsh National Opera in 1966. Coates retired from the stage after the conclusion of the 1966-1967 opera season. In 1977 she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Her husband, Powell Lloyd, was a tenor who later had success as an opera producer and set designer. In 1982 she was among a number of artists on stage at Covent Garden who congratulated Dame Eva Turner at a gala for Turner's 90th birthday. Sylvia Fisher (18 April 1910 – 25 August 1996) was an Australian operatic soprano whose stage career was made in England, who was especially distinguished in German opera, and who created the role of Miss Wingrave in Benjamin Britten's Owen Wingrave in 1971. Early career in Australia Born in Melbourne, Fisher studied the piano from the age of nine, and afterwards entered the Albert Street Conservatorium for singing and voice production and obtained the full diploma. When this was completed she continued her singing studies with Adolf Spivakovsky, and worked with him for many years. She made her debut as a student in Lully's Cadmus et Hermione at the Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, on 5 March 1932, at the Lully Tercentenary Festival. This was her only stage appearance in opera in Australia, but she rapidly became well-known there as a concert artist and broadcaster. Her concert and broadcast repertoire included many operatic arias, and she sang in many broadcasts of complete operas, notably in the title role of Verdi's Aida, as Donna Anna (Mozart's Don Giovanni) and as Ortrud (Wagner's Lohengrin). She also established herself as a fine lieder and oratorio singer in Australia. To England, 1947 It was as an established singer, therefore, that she went to England in 1947, and was first heard there in lieder recitals in BBC broadcasts. She joined the Covent Garden resident company in 1948 and rapidly gained approval. Her debut there was as Leonora (Beethoven's Fidelio), after which she appeared in several smaller parts such as the First Norn (Götterdämmerung) and the First Lady (The Magic Flute). She soon became the company's leading dramatic soprano. In 1949 she made a further powerful impression with her Countess in The Marriage of Figaro and her Elsa in Lohengrin, and also made her first and highly successful appearance in a role thereafter much identified with her, as the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. Soon afterwards, she undertook further Wagnerian roles, in which she was to become especially famous. Her Sieglinde (Die Walküre), often performed opposite Kirsten Flagstad's Brünnhilde, won its own individual triumph, and resulted in an invitation to appear as a guest artist in the Rome Opera International season, where she made her debut as Sieglinde in March 1952 under Erich Kleiber, and sang the role several times during the season. In London with equal success she sang the roles of Senta (The Flying Dutchman) and Gutrune (Götterdämmerung), and on 9 December 1952 was Isolde in the great Covent Garden revival of Tristan und Isolde. In 1956 she was the Kostelnicka in the new Covent Garden production of Janáček's Jenůfa, a role she sang with distinction for over 20 years. After one magnificent performance in the early 1970s she took over 20 curtain calls. Concert work She also appeared as soloist with the leading choral societies and orchestras, and at music festivals, under the batons of Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir John Barbirolli and Sir Malcolm Sargent. By 1955 she had made notable appearances in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and Choral Symphony, Verdi's Requiem, Delius's Mass of Life, Rossini's Stabat Mater, Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder (Tove), and the concert performance of Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler. Premieres In 1971, she created the role of the formidable Miss Wingrave in Benjamin Britten's Owen Wingrave, opposite Benjamin Luxon, Janet Baker, Heather Harper and Peter Pears. That performance is available on compact disc. Karl Rankl (1 October 1898 – 6 September 1968) was a British conductor and composer of Austrian birth. A pupil of the composers Schoenberg and Webern, he conducted at opera houses in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia until fleeing from the Nazis and taking refuge in England in 1939. Rankl was appointed musical director of the newly formed Covent Garden Opera Company in 1946, and built it up from nothing to a level where it attracted some of the best known international opera singers as guest stars. By 1951, performances under guest conductors, such as Erich Kleiber and Sir Thomas Beecham were overshadowing Rankl's work, and he resigned. After five years as conductor of the Scottish National Orchestra, he was appointed musical director of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust's opera company, the forerunner of Opera Australia. In his last years, Rankl concentrated on composing. Throughout his career he had written a series of symphonies and other works, including an opera. His symphonies were politely received, but did not enter the regular orchestral repertoire. The opera has never been performed. Life and career Early years Rankl was born in Gaaden, near Vienna, the fourteenth child of a peasant couple. He was educated in Vienna, and from 1918 studied composition there with Arnold Schoenberg and later with Anton Webern. Many years later, Rankl was invited by the composer to complete Schoenberg's choral piece Die Jakobsleiter but he declined the invitation. Rankl's first professional post was as chorus master and répétiteur under Felix Weingartner at the Volksoper in Vienna in 1919, where he later became an assistant conductor] In 1923 he married Adele Jahoda (1903–1963). Over the next few years he held appointments in Liberec in 1925, Königsberg in 1927 and the Kroll Oper in Berlin where he was assistant to Otto Klemperer from 1928 to 1931. At the Kroll, Rankl strongly supported Klemperer's policy of promoting new music and radical productions. He was appointed principal conductor of the opera at Wiesbaden in 1931, but when the Nazis came to power in 1933, he had to leave Germany; his wife was Jewish, and Rankl's politics were strongly hostile to the Nazis. He moved back to Austria to head the opera at Graz in 1933, and in 1937 he was appointed principal conductor of the Neues Deutsches Theater in Prague. In 1939, once again displaced by the Nazis, Rankl fled Prague, and with the help of Sir Adrian Boult, head of music at the BBC, and Boult's assistant Kenneth Wright, he escaped to London. In wartime Britain Rankl was unable to obtain a permit to work as a conductor until 1944, and he devoted much of his time to composition. His widow later recalled that Rankl also played the viola in a string quartet during this period. When he was eventually given the necessary work permit to resume his conducting career, Rankl conducted the Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC Northern and London Philharmonic Orchestras. He made a favourable impression; The Times praised his "boundless energy … clear-cut performance and with a strong feeling for the shapely line of a melody." William Glock in The Observer praised the "natural firmness" of his "splendid" and "authoritative" conducting of Beethoven. Among those whom Rankl impressed was David Webster, chairman of the Liverpool Philharmonic. In 1944, Webster was invited to set up a new opera company at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London. He turned to Rankl for advice and soon decided to appoint him musical director of the fledgling company. Covent Garden Since 1939 there had been no opera or ballet at the Royal Opera House. Until the war, Covent Garden opera had consisted of privately sponsored seasons, principally in the summer months, with international stars, lavish productions, and a major symphony orchestra brought in to play in the orchestra pit. In 1944, the British government introduced a modest measure of state subsidy for the arts, and as part of this it established a Covent Garden Trust to present opera and ballet at the Royal Opera House. Webster successfully negotiated with Ninette de Valois to get her Sadler's Wells Ballet company to move its base to Covent Garden, but he had to build up an opera company from scratch. He initially approached famous conductors including Bruno Walter and Eugene Goossens, but found them unwilling to accommodate themselves to the new brief of the Covent Garden opera company: to present opera in English, with a permanent company, all year round on a very tight budget. Rankl was on the verge of going to Australia in response to an invitation from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to conduct a 13-week season of 20 concerts. He and the corporation were unable to agree terms, and in April 1946, he accepted the Covent Garden post. His appointment immediately caused controversy in musical circles. To those who hankered after the glamour of the pre-war seasons he was a minor figure among international maestros. Among those outraged by Rankl's appointment was Sir Thomas Beecham, who had been in control of Covent Garden for much of the period from 1910 to 1939, and was furious at being excluded under the new regime. He publicly stated that the appointment of an alien, especially one bearing a German name was the "mystery of mysteries", and called the Covent Garden trustees a "hapless set of ignoramuses and nitwits". Webster, however, realised that what the new Covent Garden company needed at this stage in its existence was not a star conductor but one of those who, in the words of the critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor "know the whole complex business of opera inside out, and retain in their blood the pre-war standards of a good continental opera house." A biographer of Webster has written that under Rankl, "amazing progress" was made. He assembled and trained an orchestra and a chorus. He recruited and trained musical assistants. Having recruited and trained a largely British company of singers, Rankl, with Webster's strong support, persuaded international singers including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Ljuba Welitsch, Hans Hotter and Paolo Silveri to appear with the company, singing in English. The company performed a wide repertory of German, Italian, Russian and English opera. It made its debut in January 1947 with Carmen, in a performance greeted by The Times as "worthy of the stage on which it appeared ... It revealed in Mr. Karl Rankl a musical director who knew how to conduct opera." The company, headed by Edith Coates and including Dennis Noble, Grahame Clifford, David Franklin and Constance Shacklock, was warmly praised. In the next two operas presented by the company, Rankl was thought a little stolid in The Magic Flute, but was praised for "weaving Strauss's flexible rhythms" in Der Rosenkavalier. Rankl tackled the Italian repertoire, and new English works, winning praise for his Rigoletto, though with Peter Grimes he was compared to his disadvantage with the original conductor, Reginald Goodall. A production of The Masteringers with Hotter as Sachs was judged "a further stage in the consolidation of the Covent Garden company". Despite the good notices for his early seasons, Rankl had to cope with a vociferous public campaign by Beecham against the very idea of establishing a company of British artists; Beecham maintained that the British could not sing opera, and had produced only half a dozen first rate operatic artists in the past 60 years. In the next three years, Rankl built the company up, reluctantly casting foreign stars when no suitable British singer could be found, and resisting attempts by Webster to invite eminent guest conductors. When Webster and the Covent Garden board insisted, Rankl took it badly that star conductors such as Erich Kleiber, Clemens Krauss and Beecham were brought into "his" opera house. In a biographical article in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the critic Frank Howes wrote of Rankl: "By 1951 he had made the Covent Garden Company a going concern, but had also revealed, notably in his 1950 performances of the Ring, his limitations as a conductor – he was considered difficult with singers, orchestras and producers." Rankl was also difficult in his relations with the Opera House's director of productions, Peter Brook, who left after two years. Critics and operagoers did not fail to notice the difference in standards between performances under Rankl and under the guests. Rankl resigned in May 1951, and conducted for the last time at the Royal Opera House on 30 June. The work was Tristan und Isolde with Kirsten Flagstad; as it was announced in advance that this would be her last appearance in the role of Isolde and her farewell performance at Covent Garden, the fact that it was also Rankl's farewell received little attention. He was never invited to conduct there again, and did not set foot in the building for another 14 years, until 1965 for the first night of Moses und Aron by his old teacher, Schoenberg; the conductor then was Georg Solti. After the end of the 1951 London season, Rankl conducted the Covent Garden company on tour; his final performance with the company was Der Rosenkavalier in Liverpool on 27 July 1951. Later years In 1952, Rankl was appointed conductor of the Scottish National Orchestra, in succession to Walter Susskind. He held the post for five years, and gained good notices. In 1953, Neville Cardus wrote that Rankl and his orchestra held their own even when compared against Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Vienna Philharmonic, when both orchestras played at that year's Edinburgh Festival. Rankl was praised for enterprising programming, presenting the then-unknown early work of Schoenberg Gurrelieder at the 1954 Edinburgh Festival, and Mahler's Fifth Symphony, also then a rarity, at the same festival. Cardus also praised Rankl's conducting of Bruckner as "grand and comprehensive … of rare quality". In December 1957, Rankl was appointed musical director of the Elizabethan Trust Opera Company in Australia. In his first season he conducted Carmen, Peter Grimes, Fidelio, Lohengrin and The Barber of Seville. He conducted the company at the inaugural Adelaide Festival in 1960, in Richard Strauss's Salome and Puccini's Il trittico. Towards the end of his life, Rankl retired to St. Gilgen, near Salzburg in Austria. He died there at the age of 69. Compositions and recordings As a composer, Rankl wrote eight symphonies, a string quartet, and 60 songs. He also wrote a opera, Deirdre of the Sorrows (based on J.M. Synge's play), which won one of the prizes offered by the Arts Council for the Festival of Britain in 1951. Rankl's reputation today however, lies almost entirely on his work as a conductor. His opera has never been performed and none of his music has ever been published. Rankl made few recordings for the gramophone. In the late 1940s, for Decca he conducted Beethoven's First Symphony, Schubert's Fourth Symphony, Brahms's Fourth Symphony and Dvořák's New World Symphony; Dvořák's Cello Concerto (with Maurice Gendron) and Violin Concerto (with Ida Haendel); a Bach Cantata (Schlage Doch, BWV 53) and overtures and other shorter pieces by Beethoven¸ Cimarosa, Dvořák, Rossini, Smetana, Richard Strauss, Wagner and Weber. Rankl recorded excerpts from the operatic repertory with the bass-baritone Paul Schöffler in Sarastro's arias from Die Zauberflöte, the "Wahnmonolog" from Die Meistersinger, the closing scene of Die Walküre, and Iago's arias from Otello. With his Covent Garden chorus and orchestra he recorded choruses from Die Zauberflöte, Rigoletto, Carmen, Il trovatore and Pagliacci, though only the first two of the five were released on disc.

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 _gsrx_vers_526 (GS 6.6.6 (526))
  • Condition: Used
  • Condition: Please see description below for full condition details
  • Type: Programmes
  • Other: Wagner Ring Gotterdammerung Covent Garden
  • Date: 1950s
  • Sub-Type: Programmes

PicClick Insights - 1951 Wagner Ring Flagstad Svanholm Frick Shacklock Raisbeck Rothmueller CG opera PicClick Exclusive

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