Famous, but ‘not very pleasant’ opera singer rests at Grantsburg’s Riverside Cemetery

Walking is one of the daily adventures that gets me out of the house during this Coronavirus Pandemic era.

On nearly every occasion I’ve been drawn to walking around Riverside Cemetery in Grantsburg. Hey, I figure none of the people there will be spreading the virus, so it seems safe.

It’s become my tradition to look for the gravestones of people I knew, and perhaps to visit a bit with them at their final resting place.

Being a “Patriot”, fueled by a stint in Vietnam, I began pausing at the graves of veterans, saluting them, then thanking them for their service.

It’s sobering when you realize how many people I knew are now in their final resting place. And some of them were far younger than I am now.

On one particular day, I went in search of a grave I’d visited before — a long time ago when I was doing a story for the Burnett County Sentinel about one of the most famous people buried in Grantsburg.

Unless you’ve read about her, it’s unlikely you’ve ever heard of Olive Fremstad, born Anna Olivia Rundquist.

The 80-year-old was what was called, “A dramatic soprano of the early 20th Century,” and she made her mark as a world-renowned Opera Singer.

While it’s somewhat unclear how she came to her final rest in Grantsburg, Olive was “as adopted by an American couple named Fremstad,” wrote biographer Bob Hufford.

A check of the records found the names Marie Fremstad (1875-1901); Reuben Fremstad (1888-1918) and Esther Fremstad (1889-1907) of Grantsburg as the family Hufford referred to in his biographical sketch on the famous opera singer.

Former Grantsburg City Clerk Betty Peer once told me she used to get flowers sent by an admirer to be placed on Fremstad’s grave.

While Olive Fremstad received a high rating of three and a half out of five stars as a major operatic singer, there were some very strange stories told about here.

All three are credited to biographer Hufford, who called her, “Not an especially pleasant lady. Her professionalism was nevertheless respected and one legendary story speaks to her passion for perfection.”

That story was told by Hufford. “Preparing for the title role in a 1907 production of Richard Strauss’ “Salome” she wanted her dance with the head of John the Baptist to be realistic. The accounts differ, but in one version of the tale she rehearsed with a calf’s head obtained from a slaughterhouse, while in the other version she used a human head that she somehow got from the New York City Morgue.”

While that was bizarre enough, “She retired in 1920 after Metropolitan General Manager Gatti-Casazza declined to cast her as Leonore in Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino”, so she tried her hand at teaching. “But apparently she wasn’t very good at it, even revolting her students by making them study the larynx in a severed head,” wrote Hufford.

He also said, “Olive claimed no interest in romance though she did have two brief failed marriages.”

Aside from all this, she apparently had a talent that was appreciated. About her Opera career, Hufford wrote, “Olive began voice training in New York at 19 then traveled to Berlin for further study with famed soprano Lilli Lehmann”

Her operatic debut came in the mezzo role of Azucena at an 1895 performance of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” in Cologne; after three years there she played Vienna, Bayreuth, and London before returning to America where she sang at New York’s Metropolitan Opera 351 times between 1903 and 1914.

In the operas of Richard Wagner, Olive reigned supreme; Venus in “Tannhauser”, Elsa in “Lohengrin”, Kundry in “Parsifal”, the title heroine of “Tristan und Isolde”, and the Ring leads were uniquely hers.

“Her rendering of Bizet’s cigarette girl Carmen was not as well-received though she had some success with it and indeed sang it with Caruso in San Francisco the night before the great earthquake of 1906.

Most of her fairly small output of recordings has been preserved on CD.

Olive Fremstad may not have been a great American Icon. And age certainly had her quirks. But nonetheless, she brings a unique spin to the History of Grantsburg.