“beneficial” humility. Beneficial to the artist, to the art form, to the audience.
It doesn’t mean that Flagstad didn’t have a healthy sense of her own worth, but that she understood the enormity of the task of reaching perfection in such a role–its virtually inexhaustible potentials.
It’s what we all need to do: aim at a point farther than where we’ve gotten. And let our ambition be directed where it belongs and toward the right things.