Kirsten Flagstad's Met debut on 2 February 1935, as Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walkuere, was one of the great sensations in the opera house's history, and such was her immense popular success in the succeeding six years that it has been said that she saved the Met from bankruptcy. She is still considered to be one of the greatest of all Wagnerian sopranos, and arguably 'the voice of the century'.