had as a younger woman. She had also developed an arthritic hip in mid-1951 (and had to consult doctors in New York); this further made the operatic stage difficult for her, especially when singing Wagner. She gave her farewell operatic performance at the Met on 1 April 1952, not as Brünnhilde or Isolde but in the title role of Gluck's Alceste, a role she had learnt in the war years in Norway. In London she appeared as Dido (another recently learnt role) in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at the Mermaid Theatre (in the 1951 Festival of Britain season): the portrayal was recorded (in studio), and issued by EMI in January 1953 (see: Recordings). Her last operatic appearance was as Dido in Oslo on June 5, 1953. She was a guest on the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs on 29 April 1952. Four Last Songs During the post-war years, Flagstad was also responsible for the world premiere of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs. Strauss had written the pieces during his exile in Switzerland following the war (like Flagstad, he had been vilified as a collaborator with the Nazis). He intended them to be premiered by Flagstad, though not because he had her voice in mind. (The songs are better suited to the lyric soprano voice he idealised throughout his life, as exemplified by Elisabeth Schumann and ultimately his wife Pauline de Ahna. Strauss, moreover, had heard praise for Flagstad over the years, but had not heard her sing in person since casting her as the soprano soloist in the 1933 Bayreuth Festival performance of the Beethoven Choral Symphony.) It was, rather, out of sympathy for her difficulties. He sent Flagstad a letter, accompanied by a collection of his own works which he desired her to consider adding to her repertoire, and requested that she give the premiere – together with "a first-class conductor and ensemble" – of these four new orchestral lieder, at that point still in the publication process. Flagstad accepted the commission, although Strauss did not live to see the premiere. As a conductor, she chose not McArthur (who, though an excellent piano accompanist, was not considered a ‘first-class’ orchestral conductor) but Wilhelm Furtwängler (also experiencing the repercussions of suspect wartime conduct), and the pair chose Walter Legge's Philharmonia Orchestra, with which they both worked well, to provide the accompaniment. By the time of the premiere on 22