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Kirsten Flagstad: Rarities on CD

Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962) is one of the greatest interpreters of Wagner on record. She treasured the gifts God bestowed on her, cultivated them with hard work and patience, and what emerged was a miracle of sound, large as the ocean, pure as a sunrise, and radiant with all the colors of the rainbow. Most of the material included in this collection previously appeared on disc only briefly, on the now-defunct Eklipse label. The earliest performance is a 1948 all-Wagner concert from Cuba, conducted by Clemens Krauss, where the soprano is in spectacular form. The latest of the selections, excerpts from a 1957 radio performance of Gluck's Alceste, show that the nearly-62-year-old soprano had lost none of that perfect balance of registers that gave her voice seemingly limitless measures of richness, freedom, and brilliance. Two CDs, total time: 126 minutes.