Karen-Marie Flagstad


Karen-Marie Flagstad was a Norwegian soprano opera singer.
Flagstad was born in Oslo and was one of Norway's leading singers in her time. She was the sister of the world-renowned singer Kirsten Flagstad, and the daughter of the conductor Michael Flagstad and the pianist Maja Flagstad.
She played minor roles as part of her family's engagement with the short-lived Opera Comique, and had her serious stage debut as Hannah in Eduard Künneke's The Cousin from Nowhere. Another of her early roles was in Emmerich Kálmán's Die Bajadere. Her first major roles were as Amor in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and Giuiletta in Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann under the direction of Olav Kielland.
Flagstad traveled abroad and sang on American radio. On the German stage, she played Salome in Richard Strauss's opera of the same name, and Ariadne in his Ariadne auf Naxos. She was married to the Austrian pianist Johann Crkal and she performed in Italy and France as Karen Maria Crkal, first as a guest together with her sister as Brünnhilde at La Scala as Ortlinde in Wagner's Die Walküre. She repeated the role in Rome and then in Bordeaux together with Beate Asserson. She performed again at La Scala in 1953 as Wellgunde in Götterdämmerung.
She also appeared in other operas, appeared on radio with her brother Lasse Flagstad on piano, was a director in the Norwegian Opera Association, and worked with the People's Theater in Oslo.
Flagstad was employed at the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet from 1958 to 1961, where she was acclaimed in the role of Ågot in Waldemar Thrane's Fjeldeventyret and later worked as a répétiteur.
She died in Oslo.

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