As a voice teacher, she asked her students to study a human larynx, preserved in a jar. To prepare for the role of Salome, she visited the New York City morgue to get a feeling for the weight and heft of a human head.

She also left instructions that, after death, her heart was to be pierced by a steel needle-presumably to avoid premature burial.

(Fremstad's name isn't well-known today, but in the early twentieth century, she was one of the world's reigning singers. She grew up in Northfield and Minneapolis, Minnesota, performed at the Met with the likes of Mahler and Caruso, and was the model for the heroine of Willa Cather's Song of the Lark. She made a few recordings, though it's agreed they don't do her voice justice.

Today, Fremstad lies in the cemetery at Grantsburg, Wisconsin, about an hour north of the Twin Cities.)

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