Long Live Brunnhilde

In Carnegie Hall last week, the greatest Brunnhilde of this generation, Kirsten Flagstad, 56, announced she was retiring after this season. On the same night, a new Bruennhilde made her debut at the Met, and got the critics' cheers.

Buxom, Philadelphia-born Margaret Harshaw, 39, is no newcomer to the Met. As a contralto winner of the Met Auditions of the Air, she made her debut there as a Norn in Wagner's Goetterdaemmerung in 1942. By 1946, she had worked up to such bigger Wagnerian roles as Erda and Brangane. After singing Ortrud in Lohengrin that same year, she got the idea, not an uncommon one, that she was really a soprano, that her voice had "the richness but not the darkness of the true contralto --a more brilliant sound." She went to work to raise her voice and strengthen the top of it.

She continued to sing contralto and mezzo-soprano roles, but last year persuaded Rudolf Bing to let her sing the soprano role of Senta in The Flying Dutchman; she carried it off beautifully. Last week she sang her first Briinnhilde (in Goetterdaemmerung), most taxing of all dramatic soprano roles, with power, emotional depth and ringing top notes.

Manager Bing was convinced. Said Bing, who now has three Briinnhildes on his roster (the other two: Helen Traubel and Astrid Varnay): "I shall probably have to list her as a soprano next year." Margaret Harshaw was convinced too. Said she, after a good look at her press notices: "I feel so fresh, physically and vocally, that I could sing it all over again this morning."

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