Kirsten Flagstad
Retirement

After her retirement from the stage, she continued to give concert performances and record – first for EMI setting down her definitive account of Isolde in the first commercially released account of Tristan und Isolde, and then for Decca Records. She even made some stereophonic recordings, including excerpts from Wagner's operas with Hans Knappertsbusch and Sir Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1958, she sang the part of Fricka in Wagner's Das Rheingold, the first instalment in Solti's complete stereophonic set of the Ring Cycle, released by Decca on LP and reel-to-reel tape. She also spent time mentoring young singers in her native country, including contralto Eva Gustavson.

From around 1952, when she gave her Met farewell, until her death 10 years later, Flagstad's health steadily deteriorated. She was in and out of hospitals on an increasing basis both in the number and the length of her stays for a variety of ailments. She even joked with an interviewer in 1958 that Oslo hospital had become her home away from home. From 1958 to 1960, Flagstad was the first Director of the Norwegian National Opera. In her last years she gave many benefit concerts throughout Norway. She was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer in 1960 and died of the disease on 7 December 1962. At her request she was buried in an unmarked grave in Vestre Gravlund Cemetery in the Frogner borough of Oslo. The largest floral arrangement at her funeral was sent by Lauritz Melchior.
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