100 Kroner 2007, Norway
| in Krause book | Number: 49d |
| Years of issue: | 2007 |
| Edition: | |
| Signatures: | Norges sentralbanksjef: Svein Gjedrem (in office 1999 - 2010), Hovedkasserer: Trond Eklund |
| Serie: | Series VII notes (1994-2020) |
| Specimen of: | 2003 |
| Material: | Cotton fiber |
| Size (mm): | 136 х 65 |
| Printer: | Norges Bank, Oslo (till 2008) |
* All pictures marked 
are increased partially by magnifying glass, the remaining open in full size by clicking on the image.
** The word "Specimen" is present only on some of electronic pictures, in accordance with banknote images publication rules of appropriate banks.
Description
Watermark:
Repeated image of Kirsten Malfrid Flagstad.
Avers:
The engraving on banknote is made after this photo of Kirsten Malfrid Flagstad.
Kirsten Malfrid Flagstad (12 July 1895 – 7 December 1962) was a Norwegian opera singer and a highly regarded Wagnerian soprano. She ranks among the greatest singers of the XX century, and many opera critics called hers "the voice of the century." Desmond Shawe-Taylor wrote of her in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera: "No one within living memory surpassed her in sheer beauty and consistency of line and tone."
Flagstad was born in Hamar, Norway, in her grandparents' home. Though she never actually lived in Hamar, she always considered it her home town. She was raised in Oslo within a musical family; her father Michael Flagstad was a conductor and her mother Maja Flagstad a pianist. She received her early musical training in Oslo and made her stage debut at the National Theatre in Oslo as Nuri in Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland in 1913. Her first recordings were made between 1913 and 1915. After further study in Stockholm with Dr. Gillis Bratt, she pursued a career in opera and operetta in Norway. In 1919, she married her first husband Sigurd Hall and a year later gave birth to her only child, a daughter, Else Marie Hall. Later that year she signed up with the newly created Opera Comique in Oslo, under the direction of Alexander Varnay and Benno Singer. Varnay was the father of the famous soprano Astrid Varnay. Her ability to learn roles quickly was noted, as it often took her only a few days to do so. She sang Desdemona opposite Leo Slezak, Minnie, Amelia and other lesser roles at the Opera Comique.
She sang at the Stora Teatern of Gothenburg, Sweden, between 1928 and 1934. Flagstad made her debut there singing Agathe in Der Freischütz by Weber. In 1930, a revival of Nielsen's Saul and David featured Flagstad singing the role of Michal. On 31 May 1930 she married her second husband, the Norwegian industrialist and lumber merchant Henry Johansen, who subsequently helped her in expanding her career. In 1932 she made her debut in Rodelinda by Handel.
After singing operetta and lyric roles such as Marguerite in Faust for over a decade, Flagstad decided to take on heavier operatic roles such as Tosca and Aida. The part of Aida helped to unleash Flagstad's dramatic abilities. In 1932, she took on the role of Isolde in Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and appeared to have found her true voice. Ellen Gulbranson, a Swedish soprano at Bayreuth, persuaded Winifred Wagner to audition Flagstad for the Bayreuth Festival. Flagstad sang minor roles in 1933, but at the next season in 1934, she sang the roles of Sieglinde in Die Walküre and Gutrune in Götterdämmerung at the Festival, opposite Frida Leider as Brünnhilde.
Flagstad was first noticed by Otto Hermann Kahn, then Chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Opera, on a trip to Scandinavia in 1929, and Met management made overtures soon after. Their letters were never answered, however. At the time, Flagstad had just met her soon to be second husband and had even briefly considered giving up opera altogether. Then, in the summer of 1934, when the Met needed a replacement for Frida Leider, Flagstad agreed to audition for conductor Artur Bodanzky and Met general manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza in St Moritz in August 1934, and she was engaged immediately. Upon leaving St Moritz, Bodanzky's parting words for Flagstad were "Come to New York as soon as you know these roles (Isolde, the three Brünnhildes, Leonore in Fidelio, and the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier). And above all do not go and get fat! Your slender, youthful figure is not the least reason you were engaged."
At the Met Flagstad became a pupil of vocal coach Hermann Weigert, who prepared her for all her roles with the company. Her debut at the Met, as Sieglinde in Die Walküre on the afternoon of 2 February 1935, created a sensation, though it was not planned as a special event. By this time, after weeks of rehearsals, Met management already knew what they had, but they nonetheless decided on a low key debut. Flagstad was unknown in the United States at the time. The performance was, however, broadcast nationwide on the Met's weekly syndicated radio program, and the first inkling of the deluge of critical praise to come was given when intermission host and former Met star Geraldine Farrar discarded her prepared notes, overwhelmed by what she had just heard, and breathlessly announced that a new star had just been born. Days later, Flagstad sang Isolde, and later that month, she performed Brünnhilde in Die Walküre and Götterdämmerung for the first time. Before the end of the season, Flagstad sang Elsa in Lohengrin, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, and her first Kundry in Parsifal. Almost overnight, she had established herself as the pre-eminent Wagnerian soprano of the era. According to most critics, she still remains the supreme Wagnerian dramatic soprano on disc by virtue of her unique voice. It has been said that she saved the Metropolitan Opera from looming bankruptcy. Her performances, sometimes three or four a week in her early days at the Met, quickly sold out at the box office as soon as they went on sale. Her services to the Met were not from box office receipts alone; her nationwide personal appeals to radio listeners during Saturday matinee intermissions brought thousands of dollars in donations to the Met's coffers. Fidelio (1936 and later) was her only non-Wagnerian role at the Met before the war. In 1935, she performed all three Brünnhildes in the San Francisco Opera's Ring cycle. In 1937, she first appeared at the Chicago City Opera Company.
In 1936 and 1937, Flagstad performed the roles of Isolde, Brünnhilde, and Senta at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, under Sir Thomas Beecham, Fritz Reiner and Wilhelm Furtwängler, arousing as much enthusiasm there as she had in New York. She also toured Australia in 1938. Hollywood also tried to cash in on Flagstad fever, after her sudden popularity in the US in the mid 1930s, with her many appearances on NBC Radio, The Kraft Music Hall with Bing Crosby, and regular appearances on CBS's The Ford Sunday Evening Hour. Though Flagstad was not interested in stardom or Hollywood contracts per se, she did make trips to Hollywood during the late 1930s for publicity photo shoots, public appearances, concerts at the Hollywood Bowl, and she filmed a rendition of Brünnhilde's Battle Cry from Die Walküre for the Hollywood variety show anthology The Big Broadcast of 1938, in which she was introduced to American film audiences by Bob Hope. Flagstad and Sonja Henie are the only two Norwegians to have their own stars on Hollywood's "Walk of Fame".
Her career at the Met, however, was not without its ups-and-downs. Flagstad got involved in a long-running feud with tenor co-star Lauritz Melchior after Melchior took offense to some comments Flagstad made about "stupid publicity photos" during a game of bridge in Flagstad's hotel suite while the two were on tour together in Rochester, NY. Present during the infamous bridge game were Flagstad, Melchior and his wife, and Edwin McArthur. Afterwards, Melchior fanned the flames further by insisting that there be no solo curtain calls for Flagstad when the two performed together. Audiences had no clue that, despite the marvelous and sometimes historic performances, the two never said a word to each other off stage for the next two years. It was Flagstad's husband Henry Johansen who finally brought the two together to make peace. Flagstad also feuded with the Met's general manager, Edward Johnson, after conductor Artur Bodanzky's death, when she asked to be conducted for a few performances by her accompanist, Edwin McArthur, rather than by the Met's new conductor Erich Leinsdorf. Flagstad had wanted this for McArthur, whom she had taken under her wing. Johnson refused and would not hear of it any further. Flagstad did get her way, though; she went over Johnson's head and discussed the matter with the Met's board of directors, particularly David Sarnoff, RCA and NBC founder and chairman. It was Sarnoff who made the arrangements for McArthur to begin conducting Met productions on a limited basis.[3] Her relationship with Johnson improved, however; just before Flagstad left the Met in 1941, on the night of her 100th performance of Isolde , she received 100 roses, courtesy of Melchior and Johnson.
Having received repeated and cryptic cablegrams from her husband, who had returned to Norway a year and a half earlier, Flagstad was forced to consider leaving the United States in 1941. Though dismissing the political implications of the departure of someone of her fame from the United States to German-occupied Norway, it was nonetheless a difficult decision for her. She had many friends, colleagues, and of course many fans all over the US. Even more importantly, her 20-year-old daughter Else had married an American named Arthur Dusenberry and was living with her new husband on a dude ranch in Bozeman, Montana. It was Edwin McArthur who gave the bride away at the wedding in Bozeman a year earlier. Nonetheless, against the best advice of her friends and colleagues, including former president Herbert Hoover, who pleaded with her to stay out of Europe, she returned to Norway via Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Marseille, and Berlin in April, 1941. Though during the war she performed only in Sweden and Switzerland, countries not occupied by German forces, this fact did not temper the storm of public opinion that hurt her personally and professionally for the next several years. Her husband was arrested after the war for profiteering during the occupation that involved his lumber business. This arrest, together with her decision to remain in occupied Norway, made her unpopular, particularly in the United States. The Norwegian ambassador and columnist Walter Winchell spoke out against her. In 1948, she performed several benefit concerts for the United Jewish Appeal. In defense of Flagstad's husband, Henry Johansen, it should be noted that after his death it was revealed that during the occupation he was arrested by the Gestapo and held for eight days. Also, one of Johansen's sons by his first marriage, Henry Jr, had been a member of the Norwegian underground throughout the war. 
Main image on background - The main hall of the Norwegian Opera (then Folketeateret), as seen from the stage.
Folketeateret (People's Theatre) is a theatre in Oslo, Norway. The building has existed longer than the theatre, and been used as a movie theatre and opera house. The theatre has 1,400 seats.
The theatre itself operated from 1952 to 1959, but the institution has a much longer history. Insipired by the Freie Deutsche Volksbühne in Berlin led to forming of interest organizations in Bergen and Oslo in 1928 and 1929. The idea to establish a good theater for the working class. The Folketeatret building in Oslo was commissioned in 1929, and the architects Christian Morgenstierne and Arne Eide worked on it until it opened in 1935. For financial reasons, a theatre did not open immediately, but a movie theatre was operated.
The first theatre performance happened in 1952. Hans Jacob Nilsen was the theatre director from 1952 to 1955, then Jens Gunderssen from 1955 to 1959. In 1959 the finances were too poor to continue as an independent theatre. Folketeatret was merged with Det Nye Teater to form Oslo Nye Teater, although it continued operation in Folketeatret's building. From 1959 to 2008 the building was shared with the Norwegian National Opera.
In 2013, Scenekvelder put up the production of the musical Annie. Scenekvelder contribute actively to the theater productions at the theatre the latest years. In 2014, Scenekvelder produces the first production of Billy Elliot The Musical outside the West End and Broadway stage at Folketeateret. In 2015, Scenekvelder produces the replica version of Mary Poppins, this was the 8th time a replica version of the famous Broadway and West End musical has been produced. The show opened on September 17th and closed on March 8th 2016. In 2016, Scenekvelder set up the production of Singin' in the Rain, the production opened on September 2nd and closed at the beginning of March 2017. In 2017, Scenekvelder is setting up the production of Les Misérables, it is set to premier on September 8th, 2017. In the fall of 2018, Scenekvelder will be setting up the production of The Phantom of the Opera, directed by Stephen Barlow.
Intaglio rosette encircles a hexagon resembling a spider web, with a hidden "N". Stylized flower vase - one of Kirsten Flagstad's embroideries, which are on display at the Kirsten Flagstad commemorative collection at Strandstuen in Hamar.
The Kirsten Flagstad Museum (no) in Hamar, Norway, contains a private collection of opera artifacts. Her costumes draw special attention, and include several examples on loan from the Metropolitan Opera Archives.
Holographic foil stripe on banknote (from 2003).
On the stripe - Sleipnir.
In Norse mythology, Sleipnir (Old Norse "slippy" or "the slipper") is an eight-legged horse ridden by Odin. Sleipnir is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the XIII century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the XIII century by Snorri Sturluson. In both sources, Sleipnir is Odin's steed, is the child of Loki and Svaðilfari, is described as the best of all horses, and is sometimes ridden to the location of Hel. The Prose Edda contains extended information regarding the circumstances of Sleipnir's birth, and details that he is grey in color.
Sleipnir is also mentioned in a riddle found in the 13th century legendary saga Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, in the XIII-century legendary saga Völsunga saga as the ancestor of the horse Grani, and book I of Gesta Danorum, written in the XII century by Saxo Grammaticus, contains an episode considered by many scholars to involve Sleipnir. Sleipnir is generally accepted as depicted on two VIII century Gotlandic image stones: the Tjängvide image stone and the Ardre VIII image stone.
Scholarly theories have been proposed regarding Sleipnir's potential connection to shamanic practices among the Norse pagans. In modern times, Sleipnir appears in Icelandic folklore as the creator of Ásbyrgi, in works of art, literature, software, and in the names of ships. (www.norges-bank.no)
Denominations in numerals are in top left corner and lower right. In words at the bottom.
Revers:
Main image - Norwegian Opera (until 1959) Folk Theater (Folketeateret). Main Hall Plan.
In lower right corner is The Brooch (Spenne), which Kirsten Flagstad wore in Wagner's opera. Today it is kept in its museum, in Strandsten, Hamar (Strandstuen in Hamar).
Length: 6.5 cm.
Weight: 18 grams.
Width: 4.35 cm.
Material: Silver.
Color: Gold Plated. (digitaltmuseum.no)
Denominations in numerals are in lower left and top right corners. In words at the bottom.
Comments:
Obverse designer: Sverre Morken.
Reverse designer: Arild Yttri.
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