Music: Opera in Cleveland

Night after the Germans pounced on Scandinavia last week, Norwegian Soprano Kirsten Flagstad. Swedish Contralto Kerstin Thorborg, Danish Tenor Lauritz Melchior and German Baritone Herbert Janssen sang together in Wagner's Tannhäuser in Cleveland. Their audience felt a tenseness on the stage. They did not know that Soprano Flagstad had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get in touch by telephone and cable with her husband, daughter, mother and sister in Oslo. The curtain went down on the final swellings of the Pilgrims' Chorus. Flagstad & Co. bowed at something bigger than most opera singers ever see:...

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