Birgit Nilsson

Märta Birgit Nilsson, born on 17 May 1918 and passing away on 25 December 2005, was a Swedish dramatic soprano. While her repertoire spanned many operatic and vocal works, she earned her greatest fame performing the operas of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. Critics described her voice as possessing tremendous force, ample power reserves, and a bright, clear upper register that gleamed. She was considered the foremost Wagnerian soprano of her era, following in the footsteps of the Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, especially in the role of Brünnhilde.

Early life

Nilsson came into the world as Märta Birgit Svensson on a farm in Västra Karup, Skåne, about 100 kilometers north of Malmö, to parents Nils and Justina Svensson. At age three, she picked out tunes on a toy piano her mother had bought. She once told an interviewer she could sing before she could walk, adding that she even sang in her dreams. Her vocal talent first came to light when she sang in her church choir; a local choirmaster heard her and advised voice lessons.

To prepare for an audition at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm, she studied for six months with Ragnar Blennow in Åstorp. She placed first out of 47 singers and received the Christina Nilsson scholarship, named for the famous soprano. At the academy, her teachers were Joseph Hislop and Arne Sunnegårdh, but she considered herself self-taught, telling an interviewer in 1981 that the stage is the best teacher because you walk out and must learn to project. She disliked her early instruction and credited her success to native talent, saying her first teacher nearly killed her and the second was almost as bad.

Early career

Her professional debut came in 1946 at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, with only three days’ notice, replacing an ailing singer in the role of Agathe in Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz. Conductor Leo Blech was harsh with her, and she later wrote in her autobiography that she even thought about suicide after the performance. In 1947, she gained national attention singing Verdi’s Lady Macbeth under Fritz Busch. A wide range of roles followed, from Richard Strauss and Verdi to Wagner, Puccini, and Tchaikovsky.

In Stockholm, she built a steady repertoire of lyric-dramatic parts, including Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Aida, Lisa in The Queen of Spades, Tosca, Venus in Tannhäuser, Sieglinde in Die Walküre, Senta in Der fliegende Holländer, and the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier—one of her favorites—all sung in Swedish. In 1949, she performed in Ariadne auf Naxos alongside Hjördis Schymberg and Elisabeth Söderström. Under Fritz Busch’s guidance, her career took off. He helped secure her first major engagement outside Sweden, as Electra in Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1951.

International engagements

Her debut at the Vienna State Opera in 1953 was a turning point; she became a regular performer there for over 25 years. That was followed by Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin at the Bayreuth Festival in 1954, and then her first Brünnhilde in a complete Ring at the Bavarian State Opera during the Munich Opera Festival of 1954. She later returned to Bayreuth as Sieglinde, Brünnhilde, and Isolde until 1969. She took the title role of Turandot—a part that is short but demands an unusually big sound—to La Scala in Milan in 1958, and then to the rest of Italy.

Nilsson made her American debut as Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Die Walküre in 1956 with the San Francisco Opera. She achieved international stardom after a performance as Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1959, which made front-page news. She said the single biggest event in her life was being asked to perform at the opening of the 180th season at La Scala as Turandot in 1958. She performed at many major opera houses worldwide, including Vienna, Berlin, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Tokyo, Paris, Buenos Aires, Chicago, and Hamburg.

From the 1960s through to the 1980s

In 1973, she sang with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in an all-Wagner concert that opened the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House. From the 1960s through the 1980s, Nilsson was widely recognized as the leading Wagnerian soprano of her time, the successor to Kirsten Flagstad, especially as Brünnhilde. But she also sang many other famous soprano roles, such as Leonore, Aida, Turandot, Tosca, Elektra, and Salome. The New York Times described her voice as having impeccable trueness and impregnable stamina.

Conductor Erich Leinsdorf thought her longevity, like Flagstad’s, came from her Scandinavian heritage, noting that Wagner required thoughtful, patient, and methodical people. Nilsson herself attributed her long career to no special lifestyle or regimen, saying she did nothing particular—she didn’t smoke, drank a little wine and beer, and was born with the right parents. In sheer power, her high notes were sometimes compared to those of Broadway belter Ethel Merman. However, Nilsson claimed her explosive high notes, her biggest asset on stage, were not captured properly in studio recordings.

She lamented that it always made her a bit sad to hear her own recordings, and many people told her she sang much better in person than on record, which didn’t flatter her because she knew what would remain after she stopped singing. Twice at the Met, Nilsson suffered injuries that kept her from performing. In February 1971, she sprained her ankle during a performance of Elektra, causing one cancellation (replaced by a Fidelio performance with Christa Ludwig), though she recovered to sing the broadcast Elektra on 27 February. More seriously, in March 1974, she fell and dislocated her shoulder during a rehearsal of Götterdämmerung.