Songs of Goodby

She was a slender girl of 18 when she first walked onto the stage of Oslo's National Theater to make her operatic debut in d'Albert's Tiefland. She had only a small voice, but critics agreed that its quality was pleasing and that she was "very musical.'' After that she made rapid strides, and the world beyond Oslo inevitably heard of Kirsten Flagstad. Last week, 40 years to the day after her debut and after one of the great operatic careers of the 20th century. Soprano Flagstad sang goodby on the same stage.

She chose three songs by Norway's Composer Edvard Grieg, followed by Isolde's Liebestod from Tristan and the last scene from Goetterdaemmerung. At the end, the international audience rose and shouted for a full five minutes while Kirsten Flagstad curtsied and smiled with tears in her eyes.

Her decision to retire at 58 had been made after the war, when she came out of semi-retirement in Norway to return to opera and the world's concert stages. She wanted to quit while she was still in top voice, she said. Besides, she was just plain tired of public life. She wanted to retire to her big house in Kristiansand, on the southern coast of Norway, and sing only when she felt like it.

Her Oslo listeners hated to see her go, and many of them felt that her voice was as beautiful and sumptuous as ever. But Kirsten Flagstad had made up her mind. She finished with the last notes of one of her most famous roles, ending with Bruenn-hilde's portentous words:

The twilight of the gods draws near . . . Siegfried! Siegfried! See! Sweetly your wife greets you.

"This is definitely my farewell," said Flagstad. "From now on I am a private person."

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