Music: Norwegian Nightingale

“Everybody’s another Flagstad when I’m being told about her,” grumbled the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Eugene Ormandy. But after listening to recordings, he hired Norwegian Soprano Aase Nordmo-Lövberg, sight unseen. Last week Soprano Lövberg, 34, a statuesque blonde, appeared in Philadelphia’s Academy of Music for her American debut. Despite a deep chest cold, she sang a challenging program of arias from Beethoven’s Fidelio and Wagnerian selections. Soprano Lövberg proved to be a sort of Flagstad in miniature, more lyric than dramatic, with a round, pure and rangy voice. Said Conductor Ormandy: “One of the greatest singers I’ve heard anywhere.”

The Norwegian nightingale was born north of the Arctic Circle, and would probably never have had a singing career if the Norwegian army’s general staff had not been quartered on her father’s farm during the war. Not knowing how to awaken a man of the rank of General Otto Ruge, Norway’s commander in chief, Aase’s mother asked her 17-year-old daughter to sit at the organ and sing him awake. Ruge was so impressed that he urged her to study. Since then she has risen to opera stardom in Europe. Once, following a performance, Flagstad herself appeared in Aase’s dressing room and announced: “You are my successor.”