In a Manhattan hotel room the career of a great, oldtime opera singer was reflected last week beyond the eloquence of words. Furniture had been removed to give space for lavish costumes. Tables were strewn with jeweled crowns and girdles, feathered hats and helmets, flowing wigs and well-worn shoes. From her rigid retirement in nearby Bronxville, Mme Olive Fremstad at 63 had emerged to sell the glamorous trappings which represented her years of triumphs. She presided over the exhibit with all her oldtime manner, fingered with wistful pride the silver cape she had worn as Elsa, the shiny helmet that had been hers as Brünnhilde, the regal white train in which she had swept the stage as Isolde.
Older critics still refer nostalgically to the way Olive Fremstad interpreted the great Wagner heroines. The younger generation of operagoers hears little about the woman who, from the beginning of the century to the time of the War, was one of the most vital, colorful figures appearing anywhere in public. Fremstad was the daughter of a Swedish masseuse and a Norwegian doctor who gave up a profitable practice in Oslo to go to the U. S. as a Methodist missionary. Settling in St. Peter, some 75 miles from Minneapolis, the self-appointed evangelist toured the Minnesota countryside, holding burning revival meetings. Young Olive went with him. played a portable organ when she was so small that she wore blocks strapped to the bottom of her feet in order to reach the pedals. If conversions were slow in starting, she had to work herself up to an intense emotional pitch to lead the way.
Throughout her career Fremstad retained this ability to work herself into a state of dramatic exaltation. But unlike most singers who have exerted a compelling emotional appeal, everything she accomplished was the result of grueling work. To learn English and to get some schooling, her father bound her out to a Minneapolis family. Great was the sensation when in later years the head of that household refused to pay for a ticket to hear a person sing who had been a "servant" in his family. In Minneapolis Fremstad gave her first formal concert, earned enough to go to Manhattan where the late Frederick Bristol gave her lessons in return for which she played the accompaniments for all his other pupils. As a soloist at St. Patrick's Cathedral she made enough to go to Europe, where she studied with Lilli Lehmann. She was determined to be a dramatic soprano but when her funds were exhausted she heard of a contralto vacancy at the Cologne Opera, applied for the job, rose rapidly thereafter.