If Birgit Nilsson had followed a suicidal wish and jumped into a river after her first operatic appearances in Der Freischütz the world, all unbeknown, might well have been deprived of its leading Wagnerian singer during the past ten years.

See also: Podcast – remembering Birgit Nilsson

But let us begin at the beginning. Nilsson was born into a farming family in Southern Sweden. When she was still a toddler she was given a toy piano – ‘only one octave’, as she told me –  by an old workman on her parents’ farm. ‘I learnt everything on it in C major and I played by ear. Guests to the house said I sang well and I seemed to have perfect pitch, so I suppose I was born with a certain musicality in me. I soon learned the piano and to read music, though as I was a poor player I wasn’t really very fond of the instrument. But my father was proud of me, and we used to sing and play together.

‘He was none too keen for me to take up music as a career as he always wanted me to take over the farm when I was old enough. Then he thought that if I went to ‘dangerous Stockholm’ goodness knows what would happen to me! At 15 I began to sing in church and go to a teacher, who polished up voices in the choir – I remember singing a baritone serenade for him! He told me he thought that I would be a great singer – on the concert platform –  and for that he was convinced I needed a vibrato – as that was what most professional singers had’.

A little later she was sent to finishing school near Gothenburg and took part in a few concerts there. At 19 she went back to her old teacher, who promised to write to Stockholm on her behalf. She also began to receive some encouragement from her mother who said she had a beautiful voice. With 49 others she had an audition for the Stockholm Music Academy and took first prize. Very hard work followed there. She still intended to undertake a concert career and never dreamed of an operatic one. She sang as a concert soloist all over Sweden, then began studying at the opera school but, in spite of her excellent training and promising voice, the Royal Opera in Stockholm did not seem interested. The authorities there did not take to her and Leo Blech, the musical director, suggested that she was not particularly musical. 

‘Suddenly one day in 1946 I was ordered to learn Agathe in Der Freischütz in three days. Naturally I was nervous when it came to rehearsals. Blech couldn’t understand why I wasn’t note-perfect, or why I made a mistake in one of my arias. I ran away and cried a good deal. All three performances were like a nightmare and as I passed over a bridge and I thought really of jumping in. If performing in opera was like this, I couldn’t go on – even though I had good reviews.

‘A year passed without any more roles, when one day the soprano who was supposed to sing Lady Macbeth lost her voice. Hans Busch, son of Fritz who was in charge of Macbeth, said that he had heard a girl singing the sleep-walking scene wonderfully at the Opera School, and he wanted to know where he could find her. He told his father that he was very excited about my performance and Fritz Busch trusted his son’s judgment, thank goodness. I was on my summer holiday at my father’s farm. I rushed back to Stockholm and had a rehearsal, then spent the whole night learning the part properly. This time I was a great success. I suppose this was the turning point in my life. Leo Blech capitulated and wanted me to sing under him again. In fact, he took me to Berlin with him and I sang in a concert performance of the First Act of Walküre with Frick and Hans Beirer. But at that time I was not very keen to take up an international career. I felt I would prefer to be a first-rate singer in Sweden than a second-rate one elsewhere. I sang my Brünnhilde, in Siegfried, in 1949 and gradually, quietly I built up my repertory and had time to develop properly’.

She came to England in 1951 to sing Electra in Idomeneo at Glyndebourne but did not create a particular sensation. Back at the Royal Opera, Stockholm, she sang a whole range of parts including Senta, Venus, Leonore, Tosca, Lisa (The Queen of Spades), and the Marschallin, a role she would like to sing again ‘but nobody asks me’, she said rather plaintively.

Nilsson first appeared in Vienna in the 1953-4 season and at Bayreuth, as Elsa, in the summer of 1954. In 1955 she sang her first complete Ring Brünnhilde (at the Munich Festival), as well as Salome. At Stockholm, she created Penelope in Rolf Liebermann’s opera of that name. She would not mind learning other modern roles if there was a chance of singing them at more than three or four performances. She did not agree that composers were really writing against the voice any more than Beethoven was. ‘But they don’t write a cantilena, of course, and it’s often difficult to judge a singer in that kind of music. In fact, you don’t need a good voice, rather you should be a good actress’.

From 1955 onwards she has been in constant demand in all the leading Wagnerian roles and for other parts needing her opulence of voice such as Elektra, Turandot and Salome. But she still likes to sing the more lyrico-spinto parts such as Aida, Lady Macbeth, Amelia (in Ballo), Agathe, Leonore, Tosca. ‘I naturally use a different timbre depending on what role I’m singing. The right voice for the part is something you have to learn and study carefully. Now I think I adopt it automatically. I love to sing Verdi to keep my voice flexible. If I concentrate on Wagner and Strauss alone, I lose that.

‘I never get tired of the Wagnerian roles because every time I find something new in them. I suppose I’ve sung Isolde about 150 or so times but on each occasion I try to add a bit to it. Brünnhilde and Isolde are such complex characters that there is always some new facet to discover’.

I can vouch that this is true from an audience’s point of view. Last summer at Bayreuth, her Isolde surpassed all others I have seen and heard from her, or anyone else. When singers are over 50 one expects some diminution in their powers, even some hint of staleness; Nilsson just goes on getting better and better as this Isolde and her London Elektras prove.

Elektra, like all her roles, she refused to record until she had sung it on stage. ‘And I avoided it altogether for a long time because I thought it was murderous for the voice, but when I first sang it in Stockholm, I found out how wrong I had been’.

She prefers records made at actual performances to studio ones. ‘I think one can put up with minor imperfections on record for the sake of the tension, excitement, the “heart” of an actual performance which no amount of studio preparation can reproduce. Indeed, the fact that passages have to be repeated so often may drain a studio recording of spontaneity – and there’s no public to inspire you either. Then you think that you’ve done a passage wonderfully at one take only to find that the orchestra apparently made some mistake. So you do it again and again, and that can be very tiring for the singer – for everybody.’

These days, she does not like to sing more than twice a week if it can be avoided – one reason why she has not been heard in the Ring at Bayreuth in recent years, much to the chagrin of dedicated Wagnerians. She likes to arrive in a place at least two or three days before she starts working there in order to acclimatise herself. She has no particular routine, likes to lead a normal life. Whenever she can, she returns to her father’s farm to relax in the fresh air. Her husband owns three restaurants in Stockholm, but none the less manages to travel with her quite often. He once said that he christened one of his restaurants Rheingold because ‘my wife has no part in it’.

By all accounts she is the best and most generous of colleagues. When we met, she was only too ready to express her thanks to Marie Collier who altered the stage action on the first night of Elektra ‘so as to give me three hairpins to fix my wig back on – it had begun to slip off my head. On the second night, the wig fell over my face. Again she came to my rescue by bending over me and moving it away. That’s what I call being a good colleague and I’ll never forget her kindness’.

She is also known on occasion as something of a wag. Apocryphal or not, the story is told of how on one occasion in the Third Act of Siegfried she pinned a notice under her armour. When Windgassen lifted it off the sleeping Brünnhilde, he was startled to read the message ‘Please don’t disturb’. More recently when rehearsing the Walküre Brünnhilde with Karajan, she was a little put out that during the whole of Wotan’s monologue he was spotlit and she was in complete darkness. ‘Alright,’ she said, ‘I can go out for a coffee’. Then added, ‘I didn’t know producing was so easy’.