La Nilsson: My Life in Opera
by Birgit Nilsson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Birgit NilssonTranslator: Doris Jung Popper
Contributor: Georg Solti
Contributor: Peggy Tuller
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); Swedish (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-31
ISBN: 1555536700
Number of pages: 356
Publisher: Northeastern
Book Reviews of La Nilsson: My Life in Opera
Book Review: The Lady Speaks...Funny, Informative, Totally Enchanting
Summary: 5 Stars
At the age of 62 I have come to begin thinking differently, somewhat, than previously. One of these is to look back and begin to discern who, truthfully, were the greatest, most entertaining, stars of the recent past, or the latter half of the century. In opera, then, the names of Caballe (for her Verdi), Sutherland (for her great bel canto roles), Price, Horne, certainly Callas, Tebaldi, Freni and Scotto all stand out as the best-of-the-best for great interpreters of their respective positions of great operatic sopranos.
Above all of them, looms one radiant interpreter of some of the most-loved, and heaviest, roles of all, the great Birgit Nilsson. There, surely, will never be another to rival her for a very long time to come...they simply don't make them like her anymore.
Here, she gives us insights and history from her life, from a little girl on the farm, through her formative years, to her discovery, late, that she wanted to be a singer, and her direction, through determination, to become a great singer. As history would prove, of course, she MORE than lived up to her wishes and expectations.
Funny, Witty, Down-to-Earth, un-fancily presented, we are picked up and carried along with her as she progresses through her life as she makes the journey that eventually places her at the absolute pinnacle of fame as the greatest Wagner interpreter, not just of her generation, but extending beyond, to today, and I am sure, well into the future. She will long be held up as the standard that all Wagner sopranos will be measured by.
Much of the information we know or have heard of through the media, etc., and stories passed on about her. But some are new, and very interesting and enlightening to know of. I was totally ignorant of the stalker that troubled her for years and years, but I did know of the injury at the Met, and her very brave decision to continue performing...this was the professional integrity of this great lady...she came to do a job, and damnit, she would do that job!
If you are an opera lover, and also like great stories, and delving into backgrounds of important artistic people, this book will be a great joy to you. I doubt you will put it down for long until you have finished it. She simply "makes you want to know more" about her and the goings-on in her life.
She was a great lady, a great artist, and has given us her life story not in a grand presentation, but in "commoner" style, which reflects from whence she came, and where she longed to retire to after her dizzying career of being in demand beyond her imagination.
Sadly, for those of us who loved her dearly for all she did, and left for us as documents to her great art in her recordings, she passed away on Christmas Day, 2004. But, Happily, she left us this wonderfully insightful peek into her private world that we would come to know her more closely than we ever could have by knowing of her from her career alone.
There are many wonderful photos from childhood throughout her life, as well as a complete discography, and many other notated events of her life in the back of this wonderful book.
Summary of La Nilsson: My Life in Opera
First published to wide acclaim in Sweden (1995) and in Germany (1997), the autobiography of opera legend Birgit Nilsson (1918-2005) is finally available in an English translation. From her humble roots in rural Sweden to her artistic triumphs in Stockholm, Bayreuth, Milan, and the Metropolitan Opera House, this candid and utterly charming memoir reveals the personality behind one of the great voices of the past century.Gracefully weaving together the private and professional, Nilsson chronicles her idyllic childhood in Vastra Karup, the early recognition of her unique natural abilities, and her first tentative steps into a wider artistic world. After achieving national acclaim in Verdi's Lady Macbeth, she went on to establish herself as the dominant Wagnerian soprano of her generation, appearing at the Bayreuth and Munich Festivals, and the Vienna and Bavarian State Opera Houses, creating, along the way, definitive performances of Sieglinde, Bruennhilde, and Isolde. The book details her rise to international stardom with behind-the-scenes recollections of her phenomenal triumph as Turandot at La Scala in 1958 and her headline-making Met premier in Tristan und Isolde the following year.
Nilsson's long and illustrious career (she performed until 1984), her celebrated professional and personal relationships, her friendships and rivalries, are all recounted with a down-to-earth wit and an engagingly odd admixture of ego and selfeffacement. She tells it all: the legendary quips, the often prickly relationships with Met impresario Rudolph Bing and conductor von Karajan, the infamous story of the stalker "Miss N," and the touchingly rendered relationship with her beloved husband, Bertil Niklasson.
What emerges from these pages is a diva in the old mold: a giant voice matched by an oversize personality, a professional who expected the same level of perfection from others that she demanded of herself, and a woman who loved and lived life with joy and good humor . . . and oh, that voice.
Includes 56 photographs and a discography.
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