Human qualities infused this soprano's superhuman voice
The Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson, who died on Christmas day at the age of 87, left a legacy of more than two dozen complete opera recordings. Some stand among the most famous ever made, including the historic first complete commercial recording of Wagner's ''Ring" cycle.
But it is probably safe to say that not one of these recordings does her full justice. Her voice was a gleaming silver sword, and the way she could brandish it over a large orchestra and hurl it to the back of a great opera house was unique in its impact. Her attack and sound were so three-dimensional that no recording ever fully captured what it felt like to be there when she was singing Isolde's Narrative and Curse, Elektra's monologue, Turandot's riddles, or Brunnhilde's battle cry.
The soprano was at her greatest in heroic roles like these, but in the early part of her career, before she became an international star at the end of the 1950s, she sang lyric parts. Recordings of the young Nilsson preserved by Swedish radio reveal a promising but sometimes uncertain voice; she herself said she didn't realize her own potential until she had to figure out how to sing the Verdi Requiem while she had a heavy cold. Throughout her career, the lyric impulse remained with her; one remembers the transfigured quality and high pianissimo of her best performances of Isolde's Liebestod, the ache of Elektra's recognition scene, and the quiet, mysterious nobility she brought to the middle of Brunnhilde's Immolation Scene.
She did not have the dramatic and theatrical genius of Martha Moedl or Astrid Varnay, her friends and contemporaries -- but they did not have her blazing top notes. She was a businesslike actress, and one of her few unsuccessful roles was Verdi's Lady Macbeth; while she could be melodramatic, she could not be convincingly evil. But one important thing about Nilsson is that she continued to work hard on her roles and to improve in them throughout the great years of her career. In every instance, when she recorded a role twice, the second version was superior. In her last seasons -- she retired in 1986 -- Nilsson's voice lost some of its beauty (but none of its power) and her intonation wasn't as accurate as it used to be, but her characterizations had become even more detailed.
Another point to make about the soprano is that she took her time. She was 40 before she became an international ''overnight" sensation. She worked her way up to the great heroic roles gradually rather than burning herself out in them as a young singer, the way so many of her potential ''successors" have.
Nilsson grew up on a farm and retained basic, earthy values. She was a direct, jovial, and immensely likable presence on Metropolitan Opera broadcast intermissions. And some humorous stories about her have passed into legend, like her singing: how she listed the Met's general manager Rudolf Bing as a dependent on her income tax form; how she showed up on a darkened stage wearing a miner's helmet; how she said the most important requirement for singing Isolde was a comfortable pair of shoes. When tenor Franco Corelli bit her on the neck after she sustained a high note longer than he did, she announced she had rabies.
Human qualities infused her superhuman singing. She once waltzed around the Symphony Hall stage singing ''I Could Have Danced All Night," strewing roses in her path. Her feet were planted squarely on the ground, and that's one reason why she became a goddess of song.
