"The 'Liebestod' as Fremstad sang it was a paean to annihilation," Samuel Chotzinoff said of her legendary Isolde under Mahler, at the Met in 1908. "By her rapturous otherworldly smile as she gazed at her dead lover, she illuminated the hidden idea of the story — that it was not King Mark who had stood between her and Tristan, but life itself."
