She appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1903 until 1914 , specializing in Wagnerian roles . By that time she was singing as a dramatic soprano . Fremstad appeared before the public 351 times as a member of the Met 's stellar roster , most frequently as Venus in '' Tannhäuser '' , Kundry in '' Parsifal '' , Sieglinde , Isolde and Elsa in '' Lohengrin '' . American audiences never warmed much to her interpretation of the title role in Bizet 's '' Carmen '' , but she had sung the role opposite Enrico Caruso in San Francisco the night before the city was wrecked by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and ensuing fire . ( She and Caruso escaped the disaster unharmed . ) Later in her career , Fremstad experienced difficulties with the top notes of the dramatic soprano range . She retired from professional singing in 1920 and briefly attempted teaching , but her patience for anything less than perfection in her pupils proved to be slim . One " lesson " involved the close examination of a dissected human head preserved in a jar . She was mystified when her few students fled in horror , unwilling to study the human larynx in such a setting . She used this head as a tool for determining whether or not prospective students had the " mettle " for an opera career . For Fremstad herself this was n't anything special ; when studying for the role of Salome in the Metropolitan 's premier production , she had gone to the morgue in New York to find out just how much she should stagger under the weight of the head of John the Baptist
1906 San Francisco earthquake
1906 San Francisco earthquake
Olive Fremstad