Olive Fremstad (14 March 1871 – 21 April 1951) was the stage name of Anna Olivia Rundquist, a celebrated Swedish-American opera diva who sang in both the

mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano or mezzo (; ; meaning "half soprano") is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. The mezzo-soprano's vocal range usually extends from the A below middle C ...

and

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...

ranges.Rosenthal and Warrack (1979) p. 180

Background

Born in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

, she received her early education and musical training in Christiania, Norway. When she was 12 years of age her parents moved to America, settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Even before leaving Christiania, her progress on the piano had been such that she had appeared as an infant prodigy. She was adopted by an American couple living in Minnesota, taking on their surname of Fremstad. She began her vocal training in New York City with

Frederick Bristol Frederick E. Bristol (4 November 1839 in Brookfield, Connecticut – 1932 in N.Y. City, New York) was a celebrated American voice teacher who operated private studios in Boston and New York City during the second half of the 19th century and early ...

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 Bayreuth (, ; bar, Bareid) is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town's roots date back to 1194. In the 21st century, it is the capital of U ...

and London.

Career

She appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1903 until 1914, specializing in

Wagnerian Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

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 Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become on ...

's ''

Carmen ''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the Carmen (novella), novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first perfo ...

'', but she had sung the role opposite

Enrico Caruso Enrico Caruso (, , ; 25 February 1873 – 2 August 1921) was an Italian operatic first lyrical tenor then dramatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles (74) ...

in San Francisco the night before the city was wrecked by the

1906 San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

and ensuing fire. (She and Caruso escaped the disaster unharmed.) Olive Fremstad 2

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 The larynx (), commonly called the voice box, is an organ in the top of the neck involved in breathing, producing sound and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. The opening of larynx into pharynx known as the laryngeal inlet is about ...

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 (; he, שְלוֹמִית, Shlomit, related to , "peace"; el, Σαλώμη), also known as Salome III, was a Jewish princess, the daughter of Herod II, son of Herod the Great, and princess Herodias, granddaughter of Herod the Great, an ...

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 John Barry Steane (12 April 1928 – 17 March 2011) was an English music critic, musicologist, literary scholar and teacher, with a particular interest in singing and the human voice. His 36-year career as a schoolmaster overlapped with his caree ...

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. She and her secretary, Mary Watkins Cushing, also lived together for some time. She died in

Irvington, New York Irvington, sometimes known as Irvington-on-Hudson,Staff (ndg"The Irvington Gazette (Irvington-On-Hudson, N.Y.) 1907-1969"Library of Congress is a suburban village in the town of Greenburgh in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is loca ...

, but was buried 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.

References

Other sources

*Cushing, Mary Fitch Watkins.
The Rainbow Bridge, a biography of Olive Fremstad
' (

G. P. Putnam's Sons G. P. Putnam's Sons is an American book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group. History The company began as Wiley & Putnam with the 1838 partnership between George Palmer Putnam and J ...

, 1954) *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 Sons, 1974) * Scott, Michael, '' The Record of Singing'', Volume 1 (Duckworth, London, 1977),

External links

Olive Fremstad scrapbooks (the singer's personal collection)
in th
Music Division
o
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Olive Fremstad recordings
at the

Discography of American Historical Recordings The Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) is a database of master recordings made by American record companies during the 78rpm era. The DAHR provides some of these original recordings, free of charge, via audio streaming, along with ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Fremstad, Olive 1871 births 1951 deaths American operatic sopranos 19th-century American actresses American stage actresses Operatic mezzo-sopranos Swedish expatriates in Norway Swedish emigrants to the United States Actresses from Stockholm 20th-century American actresses Singers from Stockholm