Strauss Richard Four Last Songs

The Decca recordings of Kirsten Flagstad are the astonishing last chapter of a performing career that began more than four decades earlier. Unknown in most of Europe and the rest of the world until she was 39, Flagstad had made her singing debut in 1913. Encouraged by her second husband, she sang at the Bayreuth Festivals of 1933 and 1934, and her sensational Met debut as Sieglinde in Die Walküre in February 1935 marked the beginning of a second career as, arguably, the most important singer in the world.