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At Manhattan's Metropolitan where she sang from 1903 to 1914 Fremstad was known as one of the greatest artists and one of the most difficult of all prima donnas. She had a proud, heroic type of beauty, a graceful swinging stride, beautifully molded arms which seemed to shape all the music she sang. Her voice was uneven but it was always deeply personal. And as a musician she was so sure that she was able to prompt any one who sang on the stage with her. Her impersonations seemed completely spontaneous, but they were all carefully considered before she gave them their seething, transfigured quality. As Tosca she was so tigerish that every Scarpia who sang with her dreaded the moment when she would spring on him, brandishing the knife. Her Isolde had a nobility so flamingly tense that when it was matched once with Toscanini's conducting a halt had to be called in rehearsal for the other singers to regain their repose. Critics still hold up the Fremstad Kundry as a model for that scraggly, wild-haired creature of the woods, who turns seductress for the second act. As the Walkure Brünnhilde she wore short, bushy hair, a cloak the color of the clouds, fairly flew about the stage. At a Götterdäm-merung performance she fell down a flight of steps backstage and broke her ankle. After it was tightly bound she went on singing Brünnhilde, became so absorbed in the role that she never even limped, collapsed only when the curtain fell. As a person Fremstad was as incalculable as a storybook diva. When she swept off stage she was as likely to embrace every one she passed as she was to wither them with a glance. Once she suddenly discovered that her name had 13 letters, forthwith had herself billed as Olivia Fremstad, changed back again to Olive when she realized that Richard Wagner had 13 letters in his name. She adopted the grand manner without reservation, kept a houseful of servants, a car and a chauffeur when that luxury was uncommon. In her grandiose moods it was nothing for her to spend $700 for an evening dress, or to buy a dozen hats on one shopping tour. But she was just as likely to closet herself, spend hours reading her Bible or writing voluminous letters crammed with Biblical quotations. On frequent occasions she would stride into the kitchen, undertake to cook a meal on which she would spend as much dramatic energy as if she were singing some new role for thousands of onlookers. Thereafter she would take to her bed for a day to recuperate. Her rule while at the opera house was never to go out the day before a performance, never to speak the day she sang, never do anything but rest the following 24 hours.
Fremstad's voice showed occasional wear & tear, but when she left the Metropolitan in 1914 her star was high. Manager Giulo Gatti-Casazza invited her to return on her own terms if she would only relearn all her Wagner roles in English, on the mere chance that subscribers might be willing to accept great music if it was not sung in German. Fremstad refused. When the Wagner operas were reinstated after the War, her health was broken and since then she has been much too smart to attempt a feeble, worn-out comeback.