Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Olive Fremstad received her early musical training in Oslo, Norway. When she was twelve years old, the family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Olive continued her studies.
In 1890, Ms. Fremstad moved to New York City and sang as a contralto. It was the great Lilli Lehmann who re-trained her as a soprano, but Fremstad's operatic debut was at Cologne in 1895 was as Azucena. She was a member of the Munich Opera from 1900 to 1903, and then joined the Metropolitan Opera where she starred from 1903 to 1914, whilst also appearing with other prestigious opera companies.
Ms. Fremstad was a celebrated interpreter of Wagnerian roles, including Venus, Sieglinde, Elsa, Kundry, Brunnhilde, and Isolde. She was also a famed Tosca and Carmen. Fremstad and Enrico Caruso had sung CARMEN together on The Met tour at San Francisco on April 17th, 1906. The performance ended close to midnight. In the pre-dawn hours of April 18th, an earthquake caused massive damage and claimed an estimated 3,000 lives.
Above: Olive Fremstad as Salome
Olive Fremstad created a sensation when the sang Salome at the Metropolitan Opera premiere of Strauss's opera on January 22, 1907. SALOME outraged members of the opera house's Board of Directors and also several prominent subscribers. Though further performances of the opera had been scheduled, the work was banned following the premiere. Ms. Fremstad won this remarkable review from the renowned critic W J Henderson in The Sun:
"Mme. Fremstad accomplished a miracle. A
sleek tigress, with seduction speaking in every pose, gesture, look,
and utterance, she grew steadily into the monster which she was when she
sank under the shields of the soldiers while the orchestras shrieked its
final horror and left the listeners staring at each other with
startled eyeballs and wrecked nerves."
Harper's Weekly ran the above cartoon depicting Salome's "eviction" from The Met.
One of the most famous stories rising out of The Met's premiere of SALOME was of Ms. Fremstad acquiring a human head from the coroner's office so she could gauge how to lift and carry the silver salver on which Jochanaan's head rested during the opera's final scene. "The human head is very heavy", the diva remarked.
Above: Olive Fremstad as Brunnhilde in GOTTERDAMMERUNG; a Herman Mishkin photograph.
After leaving The Met in 1914 - the ovation at her farewell (as Elsa) was endless - Ms. Fremstad continued to concertize until 1920, when she gave her farewell performance at New York's Aeolian Hall. Thereafter, she taught in New York City. During her final years, she suffered from severe rheumatism; she passed away in 1951.
Listen to Olive Fremstad singing Wagner:
From TANNHAUSER here...
...from WALKURE here...
...and Isolde's Liebestod here.