Memories of a Diva

In a Manhattan hotel room the career of a great, oldtime opera singer was reflected last week beyond the eloquence of words. Furniture had been removed to give space for lavish costumes. Tables were strewn with jeweled crowns and girdles, feathered hats and helmets, flowing wigs and well-worn shoes. From her rigid retirement in nearby Bronxville, Mme Olive Fremstad at 63 had emerged to sell the glamorous trappings which represented her years of triumphs. She presided over the exhibit with all her oldtime manner, fingered with wistful pride the silver cape she had worn as Elsa, the shiny helmet that had been hers as Bruennhilde, the regal white train in which she had swept the stage as Isolde.

Older critics still refer nostalgically to the way Olive Fremstad interpreted the great Wagner heroines. The younger generation of operagoers hears little about the woman who, from the beginning of the century to the time of the War, was one of the most vital, colorful figures appearing anywhere in public. Fremstad was the daughter of a Swedish masseuse and a Norwegian doctor who gave up a profitable practice in Oslo to go to the U. S. as a Methodist missionary. Settling in St. Peter, some 75 miles from Minneapolis, the self-appointed evangelist toured the Minnesota countryside, holding burning revival meetings. Young Olive went with him. played a portable organ when she was so small that she wore blocks strapped to the bottom of her feet in order to reach the pedals. If conversions were slow in starting, she had to work herself up to an intense emotional pitch to lead the way.

Throughout her career Fremstad retained this ability to work herself into a state of dramatic exaltation. But unlike most singers who have exerted a compelling emotional appeal, everything she accomplished was the result of grueling work. To learn English and to get some schooling, her father bound her out to a Minneapolis family. Great was the sensation when in later years the head of that household refused to pay for a ticket to hear a person sing who had been a "servant" in his family. In Minneapolis Fremstad gave her first formal concert, earned enough to go to Manhattan where the late Frederick Bristol gave her lessons in return for which she played the accompaniments for all his other pupils. As a soloist at St. Patrick's Cathedral she made enough to go to Europe, where she studied with Lilli Lehmann. She was determined to be a dramatic soprano but when her funds were exhausted she heard of a contralto vacancy at the Cologne Opera, applied for the job, rose rapidly thereafter.

At Manhattan's Metropolitan where she sang from 1903 to 1914 Fremstad was known as one of the greatest artists and one of the most difficult of all prima donnas. She had a proud, heroic type of beauty, a graceful swinging stride, beautifully molded arms which seemed to shape all the music she sang. Her voice was uneven but it was always deeply personal. And as a musician she was so sure that she was able to prompt any one who sang on the stage with her. Her impersonations seemed completely spontaneous, but they were all carefully considered before she gave them their seething, transfigured quality. As Tosca she was so tigerish that every Scarpia who sang with her dreaded the moment when she would spring on him, brandishing the knife. Her Isolde had a nobility so flamingly tense that when it was matched once with Toscanini's conducting a halt had to be called in rehearsal for the other singers to regain their repose. Critics still hold up the Fremstad Kundry as a model for that scraggly, wild-haired creature of the woods, who turns seductress for the second act. As the Walkure Bruennhilde she wore short, bushy hair, a cloak the color of the clouds, fairly flew about the stage. At a Goetterdaem-merung performance she fell down a flight of steps backstage and broke her ankle. After it was tightly bound she went on singing Bruennhilde, became so absorbed in the role that she never even limped, collapsed only when the curtain fell. As a person Fremstad was as incalculable as a storybook diva. When she swept off stage she was as likely to embrace every one she passed as she was to wither them with a glance. Once she suddenly discovered that her name had 13 letters, forthwith had herself billed as Olivia Fremstad, changed back again to Olive when she realized that Richard Wagner had 13 letters in his name. She adopted the grand manner without reservation, kept a houseful of servants, a car and a chauffeur when that luxury was uncommon. In her grandiose moods it was nothing for her to spend $700 for an evening dress, or to buy a dozen hats on one shopping tour. But she was just as likely to closet herself, spend hours reading her Bible or writing voluminous letters crammed with Biblical quotations. On frequent occasions she would stride into the kitchen, undertake to cook a meal on which she would spend as much dramatic energy as if she were singing some new role for thousands of onlookers. Thereafter she would take to her bed for a day to recuperate. Her rule while at the opera house was never to go out the day before a performance, never to speak the day she sang, never do anything but rest the following 24 hours.

Fremstad's voice showed occasional wear & tear, but when she left the Metropolitan in 1914 her star was high. Manager Giulo Gatti-Casazza invited her to return on her own terms if she would only relearn all her Wagner roles in English, on the mere chance that subscribers might be willing to accept great music if it was not sung in German. Fremstad refused. When the Wagner operas were reinstated after the War, her health was broken and since then she has been much too smart to attempt a feeble, worn-out comeback.

Fremstad was not forced by financial needs to offer her costumes for sale last week. She seemed loathe to break her collection even for the Museum of the City of New York or the Metropolitan Opera, both avid for her famed Isolde costume. Most passe singers are more pathetic than impressive. But Fremstad defied pity when she stood among her relics. She wears pince-nez now. Her greying hair is piled high on her head. But the grand manner was still hers when a reporter queried her about the Elsa mantle, asked its age. Her eyes snapped then as they did at the opera house: ''What difference does it make? It is Elsa, Elsa, Elsa! It lives its own life!''

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