ffect? She once told me that Titian's Assumption of the
Virgin was her inspiration for her conception of this scene.

Luscious in quality, Mme. Fremstad's voice is not altogether a tractable
organ, but she has forced it to do her bidding. A critic long ago
pointed out that another singer would not be likely to emerge with
credit through the use of Mme. Fremstad's vocal method. It is full of
expediences. Oftener than most singers, too, she has been in "bad
voice." And her difficulties have been increased by her determination to
become a soprano, difficulties she has surmounted brilliantly. In other
periods we learn that singers did not limit their ranges by the quality
of their voices. In our day singers have specialized in high or low
roles. Many contraltos, however, have chafed under the restrictions
which composers have compelled them to accept. Almost all of them have
attempted now and again to sing soprano roles. Only in the case of Edyth
Walker, however, do we find an analogy to the case of Olive Fremstad.
Both of these singers have attained high artistic ideals in both ranges.
Magnificent as Brangaene, Amneris, and Ortrud, the Swedish singer later
presented unrivalled characterizations of Isolde, Armide, and
Bruennhilde.

The high tessitura of the music allotted to the _Siegfried_ Bruennhilde
is a strain for most singers. Mme. Nordica once declared that this
Bruennhilde was the most difficult of the three. Without having sung a
note in the early evening, she must awake in the third act, about
ten-thirty or eleven, to begin almost immediately the melismatic duet
which concludes the music drama. Mme. Fremstad, by the use of many
expediences, such as pronouncing Siegfried as if it were spelled
Seigfried when the first syllable fell on a high note, was able to get
through with this part without projecting a sense of effort, unless it
was on the high C at the conclusion, a note of which she frequently
allowed the tenor to remain in undisputed possession. But the fierce joy
and spirited abandon she put into the acting of the role, the passion
with which she infused her singing, carried her victoriously past the
dangerous places, often more victoriously than some other singer, who
could produce high notes more easily, but whose stage resources were
more limited.

I do not think Mme. Fremstad has trained her voice to any high degree of
agility. She can sing the drinking song from _Lucrezia Borgia_ and
Delibes's _Les Fi