Page 20 - Birgit Nilsson Book

In April 1947 Nilsson made her rst recording: Estrella’s aria from Berwald’s Estrella di Soria (with the Stockholm Radio Orchestra conducted by Erik Frykberg). The same year saw Nilsson on stage in a Verdi role that might almost have been written with her dramatic and vocal qualities in mind: Lady Macbeth. In the pit was the legendary Fritz Busch. It was Busch who invited Nilsson to Glyndebourne in 1951 to sing Elettra in Idomeneo, which truly marked the start of her international career.
While a student one of the roles Nilsson had dreamed of singing was that of Elisabeth (Tannhäuser) and she rst sang this in Stockholm in 1953. She was not yet fully immersed in the role and as she has written in her memoirs “It was not until several years later, when I sang the seductive Venus and the pure Elisabeth in the same performance, that I succeeded in capturing the innermost meaning of Elisabeth.”
It was as soprano soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony conducted by Paul Hindemith that Nilsson rst appeared at Bayreuth in 1953 and on 1st September she sang her rst Isolde at the Stockholm Opera. She continued her careful and detailed study of important roles and the Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde (the longest and most dif cult of the three Brünnhilde roles) was rst revealed in Stockholm in 1954 (as was her rst Salome) and was soon repeated — at short notice and without rehearsal! — for a complete Ring cycle in Munich under Hans Knappertsbusch, the greatest living Wagnerian conductor of the era. 1954 saw Nilsson’s rst performances with the Munich Opera as Aida.
20 LA NILSSON