Use this page to stay current on news about Lotte Lehmann. I try to post the news as it arrives. As you scroll down the page you’ll find items that came in as far back as 2011.

LL sings Brahms to Koalas

LL Remembers Bruno Walter

Pianist Remembers LL

Here is, Mitsuko Uchida, another pianist with fond Lehmann memories.

San Francisco Opera Photos

Some of the following photos are staged and others are live.

Unusual Photos

Review of Glass LL Bio

The 5 March 1989 edition of Deseret News includes a thorough review of Beaumont Glass’ Lotte Lehmann: A Life in Opera & Song.

Live Rosenkavalier Review

This critic writes about the Live 7 January 1939 Met performance available on Naxos “Immortal Performances.”

Teaching Methods

Here is an article from the Thai Rangsit Music Journal that aims to present short biographies, teaching methods, and conceptual ideas of the legendary classical vocal pedagogues Nicola Vaccai, Mathilde Marchesi, and Lotte Lehmann. 

TIME Magazine Review

Music: More!

February 27, 1950

“One must take things lightly, holding and taking with a light heart and light hands—holding and letting go . . .”

These words of sage advice, sung to her mirror image by the aging Marschallin in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, are largely ignored by grand-opera stars. But to 61-year-old German-born Soprano Lotte Lehmann, who for 25 years sang them with unsurpassed eloquence, they have long had the weight of dogma.

Although her last singing of the Marschallin at the Metropolitan in 1945 brought her a 20-minute ovation, she decided soon afterward that it was time to “let go.” Two years ago she resolved to give up opera and operatic arias completely, sing only less strenuous lieder. She limited her concert tours to two months a year, spent the remaining ten months at her California home. When she wasn’t singing, she painted watercolors, fired ceramics of her own design in her home kiln, worked on her fifth book, Of Heaven, Hell and Hollywood.

Last week Lotte Lehmann, in the East for recitals and her first one-man show of paintings, went back on her resolution. To honor her good friend Richard Strauss, who died last summer (TIME, Sept. 19), and to mark her 50th Manhattan recital in a decade, she decided to sing once more the first-act monologues from her most famous role, the Marschallin.

To Lehmann fans the performance in Manhattan’s Town Hall had the air of a religious rite. They sat devout and mouse-quiet while the singer, dressed in sober black, her chestnut hair caught back in a plain bun, leaned gently against the curve of the piano. Without properties, costume or conspicuous gesture, Soprano Lehmann recreated the aging Viennese beauty with her oldtime fire and finesse.

For a minute after she sang her final words of wistful resignation, the audience was silent, then burst into seat-rattling applause. At intermission Lehmann had said, her eyes shining: “Fifty concerts! Aren’t you tired of me?” At recital’s end, the audience answered with cries of “More! More!” They brought her back for three encores.

By week’s end Lotte Lehmann had sung four sell-out recitals, closed her one-man painting show with most of her 63 paintings and ceramics sold. This week she was heading west for concert dates in Milwaukee and Chicago, then back home.

Her Own Concert Hall

An Italian Appreciation of LL

Daniele Palma has written a rather extensive appreciation of Lehmann (in Italian). It is well-documented and expresses a wide range of opinions about Lehmann’s singing and interpretations.

Someone to Listen to

On this 17 June 2025 that we’ve learned of the passing of Alfred Brendel, the following paragraph from his student, Imogen Cooper, seems appropriate:

Soon after my return to London I heard Alfred Brendel playing Schubert and Chopin at the Austrian Institute. It was fascinating. I went up to him afterwards and said, “I must work with you or I’ll die”. He answered, “Why don’t you live and come to Vienna?” The experience changed my life. He gave me time without parameters, we would work for hours on end, then we would sit down and listen to Furtwängler, Fischer, Cortot, the Busch Quartet, Kempff, Lotte Lehmann . . . It was an education, and an enriching experience. He was absolutely uncompromising about how he felt things should be, but also completely convincing, articulate and eloquent. It was a privilege and I learned a huge amount from him: how to listen, how to be aware of what I was doing, the meaning and shape of the phrase and not just the notes. It was a seminally important time for me and formed the basis of my adult music-making. 

Letter to Melchior

LL “Actress”

James Agate asked music critic Neville Cardus who were the three finest actresses he had seen. Cardus considered. “Peggy Ashcroft and Edith Evans would certainly be near the top of my list. But my all-time favorite is Lotte Lehmann.” “I’m not talking about opera singers,” said Agate, annoyed. “I’m talking about actresses.” “So am I!”

Another “Met Farewell” Photo

Recordings Reviewed

Lehmann’s recordings were originally shellac 78rpm discs, then they were made available in LPs, and now the CDs have been reviewed. Naxos has released Lehmann’s Lieder recorded in the US starting in 1935. Here are some reviews of these CDs.

About This Recording: Naxos: Lieder by Schubert, Brahms, and other songs

Lotte Lehmann made the interpretation of Lieder a significant part of her activity as she gradually relinquished stage rôles. By 1947, when the records included here were made, she was at the end of her operatic career, devoting most of the remaining years of her professional life (she retired in 1951) to song.

In the latter phase of her career, from 1935 onwards, she recorded an appreciable number of songs, mostly Lieder, from 1935 to 1940 with Victor in New York (available on Naxos 8.111093 and 8.111094), then with American Columbia from 1941 to 1942 (available on Naxos 8.111095, 8.111096 and 8.111244), then back to Victor for a final flowering from 1947 to 1949. Some titles, old favourites with the singer, were given a final outing, a few were new to her recorded repertory. All bear the inimitable Lehmann stamp of impulsive spontaneity and ability, above all, to communicate with us as much through the texts as through the music, and by this stage in her career, with the voice not as reliable as it once was, this emphasis on words became of the essence.

There is something about any and every Lehmann recording that provokes a gut reaction: this woman is peering into the very depths of her being and thus delving into the depths of her listener’s psyche as she relives the emotions in hand. It is also as if she were recreating the song at the moment she is singing it. That is another way of saying her art and style were wholly individual in a manner equalled in our day only by Brigitte Fassbaender.

As she herself once put it: “I like to feel that my singing is not a finite thing in itself, but rather the means of communicating my personal convictions.” All those who attended her recitals recalled those uniquely enthusiastic crowds that were Lehmann’s audience and know that these people did not come to hear her voice, lovely as nature had made it, but to experience her personal communication. As far as the discs are concerned, it is amazing how she managed to carry those attributes with her into the recording studio.

Schubert’s ‘Ständchen’ she had recorded on her days with Odeon back in the late 1920s but with one of those spurious arrangements for small orchestral ensemble that sentimentalises the original accompaniment and with most of the old ardour requisite for this favourite preserved. The use, now unfashionable, of portamento only enhances the urgency of Lehmann’s serenade.

Brahms’s Zigeunerlieder, written in 1887, were new to her discography. Obviously she wanted to commit to disc her wonderfully uninhibited rendering of these gypsy-inspired songs. Brahms was never so happy as when writing in this folk-like vein, here based on Hungarian originals, and Lehmann, with her faithful partner, Paul Ulanowsky, responds in typically wholehearted manner to their varying moods. ‘Brauner Bursche’ is a template of the whole set in Lehmann’s reading. Over the fifty or so years since they were recorded, they have lost little of their immediacy of impact, the Lehmann warmth of tone and manner irresistible here as everywhere. To date the originals have had small currency, so their reappearance is doubly welcome.

Schubert’s ‘An den Mond’, his setting of Hölty, not Goethe, was again new to the singer’s recorded repertory: she enters delicately into its night-haunted mood. ‘An die Musik’ was, naturally enough, a regular of her recital programmes – she broke down when singing it at her farewell in Carnegie Hall in 1951. Again she had recorded it in her Odeon days with inappropriate accompaniment. Here, with Ulanowsky, she goes to the heart in praise of her own and Schubert’s art.

Brahms’s ‘Feldeinsamkeit’, a piece particularly suited to Lehmann’s dark, velvet-like timbre, is another song she was tackling for the first time on disc, and she gives it a suitably warm reading. She does the same for much less familiar Lied by Brahms, ‘Der Kranz’.In the graphic description of the eponymous blacksmith in ‘Der Schmied’, whose hammering is heard in the piano, Lehmann is at her most fulsome and free.

Like many great singers, yesterday and today, Lehmann liked to please the popular market. The famous German Christmas song ‘Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht’ was always in her song bag: this is her third and last recording. She also liked to show off her English, especially during her years in the United States. It was heavily tinged with a German accent, which makes her account of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ that much more endearing.

The next three short Schubert songs were fresh to the Lehmann discography. They are typical of late Lehmann in their renewed emphasis on telling a story, also for that joy in the very act of singing which now – near the end of her long career – she was keen to deploy on new material in recital and on the concert platform, for she was never one just to continue purveying old favourites. ‘Der Erlkönig’ is another matter. Her 1930 recording with orchestra sounds inauthentic now; able to record how she liked, she reverted to singing the dramatic ballad with the electrifying piano part – and Ulanowsky – in support. In broadcasts Lehmann liked to give an anticipatory introduction, telling her story in a melodramatic manner entirely appropriate to the fantasy of the song. Her interpretation, as you would expect from an opera singer familiar with the stage, is painted on a generous canvas, all four participants carefully characterized, consoling us for some squally moments in the vocal production.

‘God Bless America’, the alternative American national anthem, was obviously picked as a popular favourite and as a way of thanking her adopted homeland. ‘The Kerry Dance’, on the other hand, is one of those eccentricities even the best singers occasionally indulge in, way out of their regular world. The singing of the vocalised ‘Träumerei’ is an exercise in pure nostalgia.

Finally comes a reminder of Lehmann’s interest in French song. She had already recorded ‘Vierge d’Athènes’, Gounod’s subtle, sensuous setting of a translation of a poem by Byron, in 1935 (Naxos 8.111093). It is interesting that the composer/singer Reynaldo Hahn made a fascinating 78rpm disc of ‘Vierge d’Athènes’, and that it is to Hahn that Lehmann turned for two of her last six official records, made in May 1949. She catches the sensuous mood of ‘L’enamourée’ precisely and also the understated sense of utter betrayal in love so unerringly projected in ‘Infidélité’, one of Hahn’s very best mélodies. She also goes to the heart of Duparc’s inward ‘La vie antérieure’ and Paladilhe’s fine song ‘Psyché’.

But for the last official recordings of all she returned to her beloved Strauss. Once more her heart is poured out, this time in three songs that she had never committed to disc before. The sincerity and involvement of the singing is as it had been throughout the 35 years of her career in the studio, encompassing more than 450 recordings.

Ulanowsky was an Austrian, thoroughly conversant with the piano repertory. He was the Vienna Philharmonic’s resident pianist for ten seasons before leaving for the United States in 1935 to act as accompanist to the mezzo Enid Szantho. Two years later he met Lehmann and immediately set up a rapport with her, as can be graphically illustrated here as he follows faithfully those rhythmic variations in which she indulged. Their rapport seemed instinctive.

© Alan Blyth

—

SCHUBERT: Schwanengesang, D. 957: No. 4. Ständchen (Leise flehen meine Lieder)
Recorded on 26 June 1947; D7-RB-0560-1 (RCA Victor 10-1498)

BRAHMS: Zigeunerlieder, Op. 103 (excerpts)
Nos. 1 and 2 – Recorded on 26 June 1947; D7-RB-0562-1 (RCA Victor 10-1391)
Nos. 3 and 4 – Recorded on 26 June 1947; D7-RB-0563-1 (RCA Victor 10-1391)
Nos. 5 and 6 – Recorded on 26 June 1947; D7-RB-0564-1 (RCA Victor 10-1392)
Nos. 7 and 11 – Recorded on 26 June 1947; D7-RB-0565-1 (RCA Victor 10-1392)

SCHUBERT: An den Mond, D. 193
Recorded on 26 June 1947; D7-RB-0566-1 (RCA Victor 10-1498)

SCHUBERT: An die Musik, D. 547
Recorded on 26 June 1947; D7-RB-0567-1 (RCA Victor 10-1448)

BRAHMS: Feldeinsamkeit, Op. 86, No. 2
Recorded on 26 June 1947; D7-RB-0568-1 (RCA Victor 10-1405)

BRAHMS: Der Kranz, Op. 84, No. 2
BRAHMS: Der Schmied, Op. 19, No. 4
Recorded on 26 June 1947; D7-RB-0569-1 (RCA Victor 10-1405)

TRADITIONAL: Adeste fideles (O come all ye faithful)
Recorded on 30 June 1947; D7-RB-0579 (RCA Victor 10-1367)

GRUBER: Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht
Recorded on 30 June 1947; D7-RB-0580-1 (RCA Victor 10-1367)

SCHUBERT: Der Jüngling an der Quelle, D. 300
SCHUBERT: An die Nachtigall, D. 497
Recorded on 11 July 1947; D7-RB-1300 (RCA Victor 10-1551)

SCHUBERT: Die Männer sind méchant, D. 866, No. 3
Recorded on 11 July 1947; D7-RB-1301-1 (RCA Victor 10-1551)

SCHUBERT: Nacht und Träume, D. 827
Recorded on 11 July 1947; D7-RB-1302 (unissued on 78 rpm discs)

SCHUBERT: Der Erlkönig, D. 328
Recorded on 11 July 1947; D7-RB-0561-2 (RCA Victor 10-1448)

BERLIN: God Bless America
Recorded on 22 December 1947; D7-RB-2733 (RCA Victor 10-1433)

MOLLOY: The Kerry Dance
Recorded on 22 December 1947; D7-RB-2734 (RCA Victor 10-1433)

SCHUMANN: Träumerei (vocalised)
Recorded on 22 December 1947; D7- RB-2735 (RCA Victor 10-1432)

BRAHMS: Wiegenlied, Op. 49, No. 4
Recorded on 22 December 1947; D7-RB-2736-1 (RCA Victor 10-1432)

HAHN: L’enamourée
Recorded on 9 March 1949; D9-RB-0263-1 (RCA Victor 10-1509)

HAHN: Infidélité
Recorded on 9 March 1949; D9-RB-0264-1 (RCA Victor 10-1510)

DUPARC: La vie antérieure
Recorded on 9 March 1949; D9-RB-0265-1 (RCA Victor 10-1510)

PALADILHE: Psyché
Recorded on 9 March 1949; D9-RB-0266-1 (RCA Victor 10-1508)

R. STRAUSS: Die Zeitlose, Op. 10, No. 7
R. STRAUSS: Wozu noch, Mädchen, Op. 19, No. 1
Recorded on 9 March 1949; D9-RB-0267-1 (RCA Victor 10-1509)

R. STRAUSS: Du meines Herzens Krönelein, Op. 21, No. 2
Recorded on 9 March 1949; D9-RB-0268-1 (RCA Victor 10-1508)

Naxos have already issued two volumes in this series with Lotte Lehmann’s Lieder recordings, (Vol.1 review; Vol. 2 review) and a fourth volume is due for release in June. I waxed lyrical about the first two and for the present one I am also full of admiration, even though it is more controversial.

About Frauenliebe und –Leben there need be no question-marks at all, since this is a cycle seen from the female’s point of view. Die-hard feminists may still frown upon the lack of equality but there is no denying the deeply felt and eloquently expressed poems by Adalbert von Chamisso. Schumann’s settings of them from the Lieder year 1840 are among his finest.

Lehmann’s voice in 1941 had aged slightly, showing occasional signs of shrillness, emphasised here by the close and very clear recording. On the other hand her voice had retained much of its bloom and there is warmth aplenty. Like one of the finest exponents of this cycle from the latter half of the 20^th century, Brigitte Fassbaender, she sometimes sacrifices perfectionism for expressivity. She has the same array of expressive means, of colouring the voice, though Fassbaender can sometimes be even more naked. It is also a matter of basic tessitura: Fassbaender’s deep mezzo can more easily express the darker emotions of the songs, sometimes also wringing more sorrow from them by taking them extra slowly. Since the poems, generally speaking, move from light to darkness it is also instructive to compare timings. While Lehmann is marginally slower in the first three songs, she is markedly faster in the remaining five, indicating that Lehmann sticks to a kind of middle-of-the-road tempo, whereas Fassbaender’s more expressionist approach invites wider tempo differences. It could possibly be argued that Fassbaender digs deeper but Lehmann’s readings are certainly just as heartfelt. There is a nervous eagerness in Helft mir, ihr Schwestern that is touching and when she darkens the tone for the last song, deeply moving. Bruno Walter’s accompaniments can feel a little stiff, even heavy, but that may also be the recording which seems to have been made in rather dry acoustics.

Dichterliebe, the sixteen settings of Heine’s poems, was also composed in 1840 but here we are in male territory. At first it feels weird with a bright, light, girlish voice singing Im wunderschönen Monat Mai. It is however exquisitely sung and one soon gets used to the change of vocal perspective, especially when one realises that Lehmann peers just as deep into these songs as any tenor or baritone. I have listened innumerable times to Fischer-Dieskau and Gérard Souzay and was deeply impressed by Peter Schreier’s latest recording, issued in connection with his 70^th birthday. I wasn’t prepared for a soprano being just as expressive. Intimate whispers like Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’ or Allnächtlich im Traume where time stands still are so deliciously vocalised. The big, outgoing songs like Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome, Ich grolle nicht and the concluding Die alten, bösen Lieder are impressive indeed. In some other instances I felt a little disappointed, as for example in the mercurial Die Rose, die Lilie which seems far too measured. Changing ideals perhaps or simply that Bruno Walter wasn’t fleet-fingered enough to manage a faster speed. I would urge hesitant readers, though, to scrap preconceptions and give this version a listen.

Not even Brigitte Fassbaender tried Dichterliebe, as far as I know. She did however sing and record Winterreise and quite a few women singers have done so. Lehmann wasn’t even the first; that honour goes to Elena Gerhardt, who also recorded some of the songs. Lehmann recorded eleven of them during her last session for Victor in 1940 (see vol. 2) and under her new contract with Columbia the following year she set down another nine, in both cases with her regular pianist Paul Ulanowsky. The Victor session mainly concentrated on the later songs while the Columbias mostly cover the earlier ones. As with the songs on vol. 2 it is deeply moving to hear the female voice changing the perspective of the songs, making them more frail. But Gefrorne Tränen becomes gripping through her use of almost contralto chest register. In Frühlingstraum with its quick changes between bright thoughts of Spring and the darker sides of the singer’s predicament she is masterly expressive and Paul Ulanowsky is also at his best here. In the last song, Der Leiermann, the chill of the singing and the grinding of the organ send ice shivers down the spine.

My admiration for Lotte Lehmann as a Lieder singer is not only undiminished – it has grown further. The close recording of the voice leaves almost no barrier between the singer and the listener but in this case lends the songs a rare intimacy.

Göran Forsling

On this, the fourth volume in Naxos’s series with Lotte Lehmann’s Lieder recordings, we meet her during five recording sessions and in spite of her being 53 at the time her voice is in mint condition and her insight is second to none. As before the songs are presented chronologically in the order they were recorded, except for the Wesendonck songs, which were split over two sessions and not recorded in the order they were published, but the producer, Walter Andrews, rightly wanted them to be heard together. For some inexplicable reason only two of them were published on 78 rpms and of the Wolf songs none at all. Having sung Wagner all her life she was better suited for these songs than most other sopranos and she sings them as well as any other recorded version I have heard. She also catches the varying moods of the Wolf songs to perfection, the nervously rushing Wer tat deinem Füsslein weh? perhaps the most remarkable.

Even better is her Brahms. Die Mainacht is dark and husky, the three songs from Deutsche Volkslieder (tr. 2, 7 and 8) light and warm and especially Feinsliebchen (tr. 2) is cajoled and coloured with obvious relish. An die Nachtigall is light, Auf dem Kirchhofe forceful and darkly brooding in the beginning, inward and filled resigned towards the end, sung with perfect legato. Wie bist du, meine Königin? is light and warm, Sonntag girlish and joyful, Wiegenlied simple and unaffected and, best of all, the beautiful contemplation on the moonlit nightscape of Ständchen.

The six Wiener Lieder, which conclude the disc, are sung with true affection and, having had to leave the Austrian capital three years earlier, the city, not of her dreams but of her life for so many years, there had to a large dose of nostalgia involved. Wien, du stadt meiner Träume, also a great favourite of Birgit Nilsson’s, who regularly sang it on her recitals, is sung with a light lilt and especially the reprise of the refrain is enticing. Unfortunately there is some distortion here and in the following song. Im Prater blüh’n wieder die Bäume is lovely and she caresses the slow melody in Heut’ macht die Welt, which may be a totally unknown song by Johann Strauss but in reality it is the well-known first waltz theme from Kaiser-Walzer, which Nico Dostal has adapted and amended.

Some readers may already own this compilation, since it was previously released on Romophone. Those who didn’t buy it then shouldn’t hesitate this time and they should also start saving up for the next volume in this series which will be due before long.

In short: some of the best Lieder singing from a golden era and the charming Viennese songs are sung with just as much feeling as the rest.

Göran Forsling

The answer to first question is unavoidably: “Of course one can hear that this is not a young singer, but not as much as could be expected. It was a mature voice also back in 1942 and having more and more reduced her appearances in opera and devoted much of her time to song she hadn’t exposed her marvelous instrument to too much tear and wear.” The answer to the second question is simply: “No!” I have to qualify this statement a little: Once or twice it seems that she has to labour the top notes but otherwise she is utterly secure, the voice seems to obey her every intention and that annoying vibrato that tends to creep in and widen with advancing years is practically non-existent. The tone is slightly darker and rounder, like a good red wine that has matured in oak-barrel.

Readers who have followed my Lieder Odyssey in Lotte Lehmann’s company will know how much I admire her; not only for the sheer quality of the singing but even more for her deep insights. The repertoire here is a mix of old favourites that had followed her through the years and some new material, at least as far as recordings are concerned. This also shows that she wasn’t content to rest on her laurels but wanted to explore new islands in the vast Lieder archipelago.

Brahms’ Zigeunerlieder were new to her discography and the only thing to regret is that she didn’t record the full cycle. But the eight songs she recorded are valuable and they show that her powers were undiminished. In fact there is an earthiness to her singing that is wholly appropriate. The other Brahms songs are also good and especially Feldeinsamkeit is moving in its nobility and majesty.

As in most of her earlier sessions she didn’t content herself with setting down just a few songs. On 26 June 1947 she recorded 14 songs, which says something about her stamina. Moreover they are all first takes, which shows how utterly secure she was: not a sour tone to be corrected, not a phrase that she or the producer wanted to improve. We should remember that in those days the recording technique didn’t allow splicing together pieces from several takes to a satisfying unit, so what we hear on these sides is exactly what was recorded in one take.

Schubert was always at the core of her repertoire and these are wonderful readings; also Nacht und Träume, which surprisingly was un-issued on 78rpm, the reason possibly that there was nothing to couple it with. Der Erlkönig is a gem, where she differentiates the characters well. This, by the way, is the only item on the whole disc where a second take was used.

During 1947 she also had two sessions with orchestra. The first one, in June, resulted in a Christmas record with a powerful Adeste fidelis and full-voiced but still restrained Stille Nacht, sung in German. The orchestral arrangements are discreet but efficient and these are two tracks that still hold their own in the flood of Christmas songs that are poured out every year.

In the second orchestral session, held two days before Christmas Eve, she recorded God Bless America as a tribute to her adopted homeland, powerfully sung but not pompously. For The Kerry Dance she lightens her voice and sounds a good deal younger than her age. The two well-known German pieces, Schumann’s Träumerei, vocalised, with a sweet solo violin introduction and beautifully sung, and Brahms’ Wiegenlied, sincere and hushed, were obviously also aimed at a popular market. Today we may frown at this sweet treatment of ‘light classics’ but they are certainly done with honesty and commitment.

For her very last recording session, in March 1949, she chose some French songs, which are stylish and intense. Reynaldo Hahn’s songs are, to my mind, too rarely heard. During all my years of concert going I can only remember one recital with some Hahn included and that was Victoria de los Angeles in the Wigmore Hall in 1990. The songs Ms Lehmann chose for this session are two of his best. Duparc’s La vie antérieure is a masterpiece, as are all his songs, and her reading is one of the best things on this disc. Paladilhe is known, if at all, almost exclusively for Psyché, which was quite popular a century ago and recorded by several great singers during the acoustic era. The song is simple but beautiful. The only other piece by this composer I could find in my collection was a Tito Schipa recording from 1924 of an aria from Suzanne, obviously an opera.

The last three songs in her recording career were, suitably enough, by Richard Strauss. Strauss admired her and she championed his works, not least during her operatic career, where she was the Feldmarschallin, the Arabella and the Ariadne. These songs were all new to her recorded repertoire and they seem to rejuvenate her. In Die Zeitlose she sounds almost girlish – “Timeless” indeed! The wonderful Du meines Herzens Krönelein worthily crowns her recorded output.

Those who have invested in the previous volumes should do so with this one too. The six volumes together constitute one of most important collections of Lieder recordings ever issued.

Göran Forsling 

No one who loves this music can afford to be without this recording.

Recorded almost eighty years ago it is remarkable how much information was hidden on the twenty-six shellac sides. In his technical notes on the Pristineclassical website Andrew Rose claims to have opened up the top end of the frequency range to somewhere around 10kHz through use of with the use of XR technology. That’s ‘roughly double the expected frequency response for a set of 78s’. The risk is that there are also hidden shortcomings, primarily ‘the dreaded swish’. Today it is possible to eliminate swish without affecting the music – but it has to be done one swish at a time and on this set it is a question of more than 9000! Obviously it’s a very laborious task.
 
Eight years ago Naxos issued this set, restored by Mark Obert-Thorn; also on Andante. Since then there have been important technological advances. Unfortunately I haven’t had access to that earlier set, but I have several snippets from this legendary recording on various LPs and the difference is amazing. First and foremost we hear so much more of the orchestra. The introduction, so magically scored, now unfolds with a clarity and richness of detail that one couldn’t have dreamed were inherent in the old shellacs. The velvety strings of the Vienna Philharmonic caress the ear with marvellous warmth and the pizzicato playing in the introduction to act III is extraordinarily well-defined. The delicious final bars are also pin-point clear. The voices are well defined and even though dynamics are limited compared to more recent efforts there is an overall quality that should make this issue attractive even to those who normally are allergic to historical recordings.
 
The performance in itself is a true classic and it has been hailed uncountable times. Let me just add to the laurels heaped upon it with a few personal notes. It is heavily cut, so heavily that it is not even an abridged version but ‘Selected passages’ as the header correctly states. The whole reception scene in act I is gone, thus also the Italian tenor’s Di rigori armato. Great portions of Baron Ochs’s boisterous behaviour in act II are also cut as well as much else. An uncut performance takes a little more than three hours; this one plays for 98:26, not 118:26 as stated on the inlay. In other words about half the score is cut out. What remains offers what is indubitably the best of the opera, very much concentrated around the four leading characters.

Of these Richard Mayr, who was nearing the end of a more than 30-year-long career and died only two years later, was a little past his best. His tone had dried out compared to what he sounded like a decade earlier. He was however the Ochs of his time in Vienna, where he sang in the first performance on 8 April 1911. By 1933 he had chiselled out a many-faceted portrait that made the character less bullish, more likeable than he actually is. Whether this is good or bad is open to debate.
 
Lotte Lehmann and Elisabeth Schumann, arguably the two best sopranos in the Austro-German repertoire during the years after WW1, were still at the zenith of their careers. Both incidentally were born the same year, 1888, and thus in their mid-forties. Lehmann has never been surpassed in the role of Feldmarschallin – though Elisabeth Schwarzkopf was her equal. Hers is a portrait of deep insight and sensitivity. Schumann is possibly the most charming Sophie ever and though there are imperfections – the odd note off-pitch, some exaggerated portamenti – this is negligible in the face of such identification and loveliness.
 
Maria Olszewska’s Octavian is not quite in their class. She sings well and her round and darkish tone is well contrasted to the two sopranos’ but as an interpreter she is anonymous, compared to some later singers of the role: Christa Ludwig, Yvonne Minton, Frederica von Stade and Anne Sofie von Otter. That said, in the duets and trios she is a rock-solid complement to the lighter and brighter voices and the finale is a vocal treat from beginning to end.
 
Robert Heger may have been an able rather than extraordinary conductor, but he seems to have been particularly fond of this score and draws lovely playing from the admirable Vienna Philharmonic.
 
No one who loves this music can afford to be without this recording and with the new-dimensional sound that Andrew Rose has conjured up from the old records there is further reason to procure this pair of Pristine Audio discs.

Göran Forsling

Recital in Portland, Oregon

Recital in St. Paul

Gala Concert in Vienna

Benefit Concert in Vienna

Recital at Lawrence College

Recital in Constitution Hall

Coaching Crespin at the Met

In 1960 Lehmann was hired to help in the staging of Der Rosenkavalier. Here’s a photo of her coaching Régine Crespin in the role of the Marschallin.

Colorized Photos from Big City

Jonas Kaufmann on LL

After learning the positive words that Jessye Norman had to say about Lehmann, I was always interested to learn what present day singers think of her. Here’s Kaufmann’s opinion reported by Gonzalo Alonso: After canceling Die schöne Müllerin at the Liceu in 2010, in March 2014 he took the risk of singing Winterreise at the Liceu, also with Helmut Deutsch on piano. It was a packed house. At the dinner afterward, he had me listen to his favorite version of the work on his iPhone: Lotte Lehmann’s.

Eternal Flight in the L.A. Times

Lehmann researcher Ester Gonzáles sent photos of her discovery of a newspaper offering Eternal Flight, Lotte Lehmann’s complete novel (in English translation). The book of that title has 262 pages, so it’s a rather long work to be offered in a newspaper. The drawings that you see in the photos that Ester sent are not from the novel either in its German or English versions. That means that the newspaper had to provide such meaningful drawings.  

Record Reviews

James Altena
FANFARE magazine
March/April 2017

Remember back around 1960, when the bootleg TAP record label issued an LP of 40 different tenors in historic recordings of “Di quella pira” from Verdi’s Il trovatore ? (Well, to be honest, I don’t remember it either, being less than two years old at the time. But the friend who introduced me to historic vocal recordings when I was 20 owned a copy.) Well, here we have nothing so obsessively single-minded, but rather quite a good idea indeed: a collection of eight different historic recordings of Schumann’s beloved song cycle, set down over a 23-year span….

– Lotte Lehmann (sop), Paul Ulanowsky (pn), 2/20/1946 (live, New York – Town Hall recital)….

…Choosing a favorite version from this embarrassment of vocal riches risks being a churlish exercise; but if forced to do so, I would unhesitatingly plump for the opening account with Lotte Lehmann (1888–1976). Hers is a magisterial reading of the widowed subject of the poems looking back over her life, rendered with sovereign majesty over her art and unmatched degrees of subtle shading and inflection of the texts. Although she was one week shy of 58 when she gave this recital, her voice is in pristine condition, and the excellence of this rendition is heightened by the sensitivity of her longtime accompanist, Paul Ulanowsky. Richard Caniell has rightly chosen to employ only minimal filtering of somewhat noisy acetates (though these are no worse than many 78-rpm discs from the same period) in order not to impair Lehman’s tonal coloration. Despite being a live performance, no audience noise is perceptible; applause is not included. The sound is vastly superior to that on an Eklipse release from 1995.

Record Reviews #2

In the November 2022 edition of Music and Musical Performance, Stephen Hastings wrote “Ten Portraits in Sound of Beethoven’s Leonore.” Though the complete article is an interesting read, here are the Lotte Lehmann references:

After a positive response to Lilly Hafgren’s recording of the Liebestod from Beethoven’s Fidelio, he writes:
“For those who do prefer a more classically poised approach, the disc made four years later
by the slightly older Helene Wildbrunn (described by Lord Harewood in Opera on Record as
“the best of the acoustics”) or Frida Leider’s famous 1928 electrical recording may offer
greater satisfaction, but the only other version from the 1920s that can compare with Hafgren’s
in terms of freshness of tone and immediacy of feeling is Lotte Lehmann’s 1927 recording
conducted by Manfred Gurlitt, made in the centennial of Beethoven’s death, about eight
months after her debut in the role (on March 31) at the Vienna Staatsoper. There is no
recitative here, unfortunately, and the Berlin orchestra is unremarkable, but the electrical
recording lends exceptional presence to a voice of rare beauty and unique communicative
directness. Her reading matches Hafgren’s in its urgency but goes one step further, lending an
even stronger emotional resonance to individual words. The nouns “Liebe” and “Müden,” the
adjective “fern,” the verb “komm,” and the pronoun “du” are all vividly alive, evoking a clearly
defined physiognomy and enabling us to share Leonore’s imaginative life at the deepest level.
This ability has much to do with the singer’s capacity for feeling, but the responsiveness of the
voice as an emotionally expressive instrument is equally decisive. Lehmann is not the only
soprano here to invest the word “Liebe”—featured five times in the Adagio—with particular
warmth, slowing the tempo and building a crescendo when the first syllable is sustained for
more than a whole measure. Yet in her case the emotional impact is strengthened by a
broadening of vibrato achieved much in the manner of a string player, for Lehmann’s is one of
those voices that seem to be able to vary the vibrato at will, while the warm caress of her
diction makes us more aware than with any other singer that this word often coincides with a
return to the tonic and therefore represents the emotional keystone of the whole scene. No
Leonore on record is more loving than this one.
The German soprano—who was thirty-nine at the time—also surpasses Hafgren in the
strength of her legato. Although her relatively short breath spans—a technical defect that she
never overcame—force her to break some phrases (including the one at the end of the Adagio)
that the Swede sings without interruption, she demonstrates how a strong emphasis on
consonants (witness the eloquent initial k in “komm” and the much-repeated ch sounds: softer
and more drawn out than in any other performance here) can reinforce, rather than weaken,
the binding of vowels within a phrase. The portamentos written by Beethoven become an
integral part of the expressive mood of the Adagio: a prayer to hope (“Hoffnung”) in which
that abstract concept seems to acquire a tangible presence. It really sounds as if Leonore’s life
depends on every word that is uttered, and her repetition of “erhell’ mein Ziel” (instead of the
written “erhell’ ihr Ziel”) in mm. 60–61 seems to reflect the intensely personal character of her
prayer—although in this case (unlike Lilli Lehmann’s similar “error”) there is no textual basis
for the variant. The almost breathless intensity of the soprano’s verbal articulation explains
why dynamics lean more toward forte than piano, with no sustained use of the mezza voce. In
the score there are in fact no dynamic markings in the vocal line, and although the indications
for the orchestra offer useful hints, they should not necessarily be respected by the singer in
every phrase. The opening of the Allegro con brio—“Ich folg’ dem innern Triebe”—needs to
be attacked with a certain vigor (and Lehmann undeniably achieves this): here the piano in the
instrumental parts is surely designed to guarantee the voice sufficient audibility on the
multiple low Es, a tricky note for a soprano. Lehmann’s voice in fact sounds healthy and easily
produced throughout the two-octave range (from the B below the staff to the one above it) and
we are never aware of any awkward technical maneuvers, although in the Allegro the soprano
has to slow down to cope with the wide-ranging pairs of eighth notes in “mich stärkt die
Pflicht der treuen Gattenliebe” and takes a conspicuous breath between the two ascending
scales leading to the final cadence. The top B is radiant, however, and she approaches the
conclusive E by means of a heavily weighted appoggiatura that lends the ending an emotional
effusiveness that contrasts with Hafgren’s baldly heroic resolution. And nine years later, in a
shortwave radio broadcast of a Salzburg Festival performance under Arturo Toscanini on
August 16, 1936, she retains the appoggiatura but otherwise executes the penultimate
measure of the vocal part almost exactly as printed in the score, where the top B is followed by
an arpeggio ascent to an A before resolving on the tonic—only that these notes are in fact
transposed half a tone downward (as is the whole scene beginning with the words “der
spiegelt alte” in the recitative). Beethoven writes ad libitum above this cadence—suggesting
that an alternative cadenza (there are fermatas on both the B and the A) could be inserted if
one wished—but it is rare indeed for a singer to introduce a personal flourish here and most
prefer to sing the simplified version of what is written (with the B followed—via the leading
tone—by the return to the tonic), which is undeniably effective if the risky top note turns out
to be sufficiently resounding. The live broadcast with Lehmann is in poor sound, but once
again verbally vivid, with more gently tapered phrasing in the Adagio, where the soprano
establishes a stronger contrast between the thirty-second and sixteenth notes in the long
upward scale: a contrast highlighted also by Greeff-Andriessen and Wildbrunn. The recitative
is sung with great vigor and beauty of tone, with all the appoggiaturas in place and a
portamento linking the first two syllables of “Farbenbogen”: an image (of a rainbow) that
naturally benefits from a binding effect.
There are no unwritten portamentos in Kirsten Flagstad’s recordings of this scene. (She
was always a rather literal-minded singer.) Nor, in spite of her limpid pronunciation of the
text, is her word-painting anything like as vivid as Hafgren’s or Lotte Lehmann’s. Yet it was
the Norwegian soprano who dominated the role internationally from the late thirties to the
early fifties and the reasons are very clear in the 1950 Salzburg Festival broadcast, where the
soloist is recorded at a greater distance than in her earlier and later Met airchecks (1936–51) but
reveals an exceptional musical empathy with Wilhelm Furtwängler (arguably the finest
Beethoven conductor of the twentieth century) and the Vienna Philharmonic: an ideal
orchestra for this music. The performance the conductor draws from the soprano is less rich
in dramatic contrasts than the one she gave at the Met under Bruno Walter in 1941, but
Walter—who probably considered Lotte Lehmann his ideal—felt that Flagstad’s Leonore
remained “emotionally unconvincing” in spite of his guidance—…”

Record Review #3

In the May/June 2013 issue of Fanfare magazine, Henry Fogle writes of the “Immortal Performances” release of Die Walküre.:

“Richard Caniell’s restoration of this 1939 broadcast surpasses all previous issues in quality, even including the Met’s own lavishly produced (and lavishly priced) LP set.  The sound is fuller, the voices truer and more natural, the sonic grit minimized to a degree I would not have thought possible…The sound is now listenable to anyone with an ear attuned to ‘historic’ recordings, in a way that it never has been.

So why can you not be without this?  Primarily, but not solely, Lotte Lehmann in one of her greatest roles, caught in terrific voice and in a real performance….Her Marschallin is one of the truly great operatic characterizations, worthy of mention with Chaliapin’s Boris and Caruso’s Canio, and to have it in this form is to have a treasure.  In addition we get the young Risë Stevens’s deftly characterized and beautifully sung Octavian, a relatively unknown Sophie in Marita Farell, but one who sings with the pure silver tone this music wants.

This is a hugely important release to anyone who cares about this opera;  even if you have the performance in an earlier incarnation, replacement is urgently recommended.”

Record Review #4

In the Spring 1999 edition of International Opera Collector Hugh Canning wrote of a Rosenkavalier recording: 

“The most famous of pre-war Marshallins was unquestionably Lehmann, one of the great Elsas and Sieglindes of her day, who created the lyric soprano role of the Composer in the Vienna premiere of Ariadne II and the dramatic soprano role of the Dyer’s Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten.  Lehmann’s voice must have developed gradually into the heavier parts, for she is the first of several celebrated Rosenkavalier ‘hat-trick’ holders: sopranos who have progressed from Sophie to Octavian to the Marshallin….Lehmann was clearly one of the sopranos who served as inspirational muse to Strauss:  in addition to the Composer and Dyer’s Wife, she was also entrusted with the creation of one of his most individual and beloved protagonists, Christine Storch in Intermezzo, a thinly disguised portrait of Strauss’ wife Pauline. [One shouldn’t forget that his Arabella was written with LL in mind].

Lehmann’s dramatic conception of the [Marschallin] manages to convince despite her age: she is coquettish with both Octavian and Ochs, using a sly portamento (‘Du, Schatz!’) to convey her amusement at the Mariandel disguise, and she seems more tolerant than most of her successors of her ‘aufgeblasene, schlechte Kerl’ of a cousin. Indeed, from the histrionic point of view, Lehmann maintains the melancholic and frivolous sides of the Marschallin’s personality in carefully balanced equilibrium:  the dry eye much in evidence in her teasing of her lover and remonstrations with Ochs, the wet one in her nostalgic reminiscences of ‘die kleine Resi’ fresh from the convent in the Act 1 monologue and especially in the ‘Heut’ oder morgen’ section the the succeeding duet with Octavian. Long experience of the opera has evidently led to a deep understanding of the Marschallin’s mercurial temperament: her tears are not self-pitying ones and they do not for long dull the twinkle in her eye…”

Salzburg Festival Program

12 August 1936

Mozarteum

Lotte Lehmann Soprano

Bruno Walter Piano

Johannes Brahms

An die Nachtigall, Op. 46 No. 4 – poem by Ludwig Hölty

Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen, Op. 32 No. 2 – poem by Georg Friedrich Daumer

Lerchengesang, Op. 70 No. 2 – poem by Karl August Candidus

Mondenschein, Op. 85 No. 2 – poem by Heinrich Heine

Willst du, daß ich geh´, Op. 71 No. 4 – poem by Karl von Lemcke

Felix Mendelssohn

Der Mond, Op. 86 No. 5, MWV K 122 – poem by Emanuel Geibel

Venetianisches Gondellied, Op. 57 No. 5, MWV K 114 – poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath after Thomas Moore

Gruß, Op. 19a Nr. 5 MWV K 71 – poem by Heinrich Heine

Neue Liebe, Op. 19 No. 4, MWV K 70 – poem by Heinrich Heine

Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, Op. 34 No. 2, MWV K 86 – poem by Heinrich Heine

Peter Cornelius

Komm, wir wandeln zusammen, Op. 4 No. 2 – poem by Peter Cornelius

Wiegenlied, Op. 1 No. 3 – poem by Peter Cornelius

Ein Ton, Op. 3 No. 3 – poem by Peter Cornelius

Robert Franz

Für Musik, Op. 10 No. 1 – poem by Emanuel Geibel

Im Herbst, Op. 17 No. 6 – poem by Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter

Hugo Wolf

Benedeit die sel’ge Mutter No. 35 from Italienisches Liederbuch

Anakreons Grab No. 29 from Goethe Lieder – poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Gesang Weyla´s (Du bist Orplid, mein Land!) No. 46 from Mörike Lieder – poem by Eduard Mörike

Du denkst mit einem Fädchen mich zu fangen No. 10 from Italienisches Liederbuch

Er ist´s No. 6 from Mörike-Lieder – poem by Eduard Mörike

Lehmann in Fanfare Magazine

In the March/April 2025 edition of Fanfare magazine Raymond Beegle opens his review of a recent recording of Brahms songs with: “Lotte Lehmann chose her repertoire by first reading the poetry, feeling a kinship with its sentiment, living with its nuances of rhythm and inflection, and then, only after that, addressing the music of our great song composers. I wager she would not have signed a recording contract stipulating that she sing a certain number of songs, in a certain amount of time to be part of an edition of complete or collected works.”

Program with Toscanini

It’s always interesting to read a program in which Lehmann sang, especially when conducted by Toscanini.

Looking In

History: Leinsdorf

In a December 1993 issue of Musical America Worldwide, Milton Esterow wrote:

 In 1934, Toscanini was in Vienna to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic. ‘I was sitting and listening to one of the rehearsals,’ [Erich] Leinsdorf said. ‘One of the officials of the orchestra came into the hall and said they couldn’t find anyone to play Kodaly’s Psalmus Hugaricus on the piano for the old man. I told him I could. Toscanini liked the way I played it.’ For the next three summers Leinsdorf was Toscanini’s assistant in Salzburg. In 1938 Leinsdorf was hired as a conductor at the Metropolitan [Opera]. How did he get the job in New York? [Leinsdorf]: ‘Lotte Lehmann had a lot to do with it. I knew her well in Salzburg. I coached her in some of her roles. But I’ve never quite pinned down who did what. Toscanini? He wasn’t on speaking terms with the Met. The direct line was Lehmann, Edward Johnson and Artur Bodanzky.’

Doctorate

From the June 8, 1951 issue of The Jewish News of Northern California, we have discovered this article on Lehmann, which besides covering many aspects professional and personal, allows us to learn the date of the awarding of one of Lehmann’s Doctorates. Here’s the article:

Mills College Will Honor Mme. Lehmann

An honorary doctor of humanities degree will be awarded Mme. Lotte Lehmann by Mills College at its commencement exercises Sunday, June 10, [1951] at 4 p.m. in the Greek theatre of the Oakland campus. Sen. William F. Knowland and the Rt. Rev. Stephen F. Bayne of Olympia, Wash., also will be awarded degrees at the ceremony, at which 142 degrees, including 39 Masters, will be presented graduates.

Thrilling Voice

Having its roots in the thrilling voice, the superb technique and the consummate interpretive powers of Lehmann, the legend found its farthest-reaching ramifications, its deepest meanings in its projection of the Lehmann personality— soul. Many writers and critics have tried to define it. “When Lotte Lehmann sings,’’ one critic wrote recently, “a door opens into a magic world so simple, so tender, so gentle that only the truly great can open it wide.” The fine intelligence, vitality and restless creative energy that distinguish Lehmann the singer also are responsible for Lehmann the writer, Lehmann the painter and most recently, Lehmann the motion picture actress-singer. The author of numerous articles and essays, Lotte has to her credit a novel “Eternal Fight,” two books of memoirs “Midway in My Song” and “My Many Lives” and “More Than Singing.”

Writes and Paints

Lotte, in addition to possessing a warm, lucid and absorbing style in writing, is an accomplished painter. Although she has studied painting only six years, she has won several distinguished awards and her group of water colors, inspired by Schubert’s songs, were part of her first one woman show in a New York gallery recently. Although on stage Lotte is a statuesque woman of gracious presence and dignified bearing . . . and her smile wins her the unconscious allegiance of her audience . . . off-stage, surrounded by her friends, she sheds this dignity and becomes her real, fun-loving self. Vivacity and a lively interest in people and events are her outstanding social graces. However, she does not care for the more formal aspects of society. She prefers a cozy circle of friends gathered around her coffee table. She delights in long, earnest, and enthusiastic discussions of almost any subject, from the oldest superstition to the newest movie, from music and literature to politics and the weather.

Good Sportsman, too

Swimming and horseback riding have always been her favorite outdoor sports. Swimming, she considers the ideal all-around exercise. “The blood courses more quickly through the veins. One comes out of the water walking on air, invigorated and refreshed.” Possessing a disposition not easily disturbed. Lotte reserves her fire and temperament for the operatic stage and for the concert platform—in short, for her music. She has one phobia. She is allergic to jazz. Not to modern music or to jazz created for its own sake, she hastens to inform you, but to what she considers the current mutilation of the works of the great masters by jazzing them up. “Imagine,” she says, “I go to the movies and they play the Pilgrim’s Chorus from ’Tannhäuser’ in jazz. It is too terrible!” Her greatest joy, Lotte confesses, is to hear the spontaneous and hearty applause of an American audience and to read the plaudits of a free and uncontrolled press. And, as though painting, sketching, writing and gaining world fame as a concert, motion picture and opera star were not enough, Lotte proclaims that even if she could not sing a note she still would have been famous as an actress!

Lehmann Student Kay Griffel Interview

It’s always interesting to read about the career of one of Lehmann’s students who wasn’t as famous as Bumbry or Horne. Griffel’s career was significant (she’s still living) and the interview mentions her work with Lehmann. Read the review.

Canadian Recital

Recently told Lehmann-story:
After Lehmann had sung one of her encores after a February 1946 recital at His Majesty’s Theatre in Montreal, Canada, an audience member called out “Ich liebe dich”. Whether he meant “I love you” as words of affection or whether he was suggessting an encore known by that name, Lehmann and Ulanowsky (the latter without the music!) performed Beethoven’s Zärtliche Liebe (aka Ich liebe dich). BTW the other encores were: Wolf’s Anakreons Grab, and two by Brahms: O liebliche Wangen and Mein Mädel hat einen Rosenmund.

New Photos

With Ljuba Welitsch

LL Painting Discovered

Wartime Recital

During World War II Lehmann didn’t sing many German Lieder, choosing rather to perform English, French, and Russian songs. Here’s the first page of a recital that she sang at Columbia University probably in 1943.

“Live” as Elisabeth

It must have been difficult to photograph during an opera in the 1930s, but here we have Lehmann “in action” as Elisabeth in Wagner’s Tannhäuser. Sadly no date or further information is available.

Mentioned

In the February 2025 issue of GBOPERA Lutz Nalepa reviewed the Berlin Opera’s presentation of Die Frau ohne Schatten by Richard Strauss. Here’s how he opened: “The highly-acclaimed Richard Strauss soprano Lotte Lehmann who sang the Dyer’s Wife in the Viennese premiere of Die Frau ohne Schatten in 1919, was later sorry that she had not done more to popularize the challenging work.” [However, in Lehmann’s 1964 book, Singing with Richard Strauss (aka Five Operas and Richard Strauss), she offers a whole chapter of 45 pages on the opera.]

New Interview

A documentary film Von Reinhardt bis Karajan – 50 Jahre Salzburger Festspiele is available on YouTube. It covers the history of the Salzburg Festival from Reinhardt to Karajan and includes excerpts of an interview that Lehmann gave (in German) in her old age in the garden of her Santa Barbara house. If you want to see only those portions that include Lehmann, go to 23 minutes and then to 29 minutes. There are also brief views of photos of Lehmann as the Marschallin and in a casual shot with Bruno Walter.

Winterreise

In the January 2025 issue of the BBC Music Magazine there’s a list of recommended recordings of Schubert’s Winterreise. At the point that Christa Ludwig’s recording is mentioned the uncredited author writes: “Though Winterreise is evidently written for a woman (with the text’s references to a bride and suchlike), several women singers have found it irresistible, and the results have often been remarkable: if Birgitte Fassbaender’s recording hadn’t been deleted by EMI, it would have been my unquestioned first choice; and Lotte Lehmann is incomparable, as always.

Another Duo Recital with Piccaver

A few months ago I discovered an unknown recital that Lehmann and Piccaver gave in 1927. The two singers could be counted on to sell out any opera that they sang together in Vienna. Most often, they sang the leads in Massenet’s Manon. Notice the duets and solo songs that they chose in this 1933 recital.

Newly Discovered Photo

It is rare that a new photo from Lehmann’s prime appears, but here’s the proof. A very nice one probably from the 1930s has just been found!

Puccini’s Memorial Service

Lehmann didn’t sing the Mozart Requiem, but rather in Puccini’s opera Suor Angelica. Puccini had greatly appreciated Lehmann’s singing of this role when he visited Vienna.

AI and Lehmann

Artificial Intelligence has taken two Lehmann photos from her time in Salzburg in the 1930s and not only colorized them, but given them movement!  Walking  Looking around

Lehmann Centennial Review

We have just received this Los Angeles Times review of the 1988 Lehmann Centennial held at UCSB.

Centennial Celebration for a Singing Actress

By MARTIN BERNHEIMER

June 5, 1988 12 AM PT

SANTA BARBARA —  Contrary to popular myth, she wasn’t the only great Germanic soprano of her time.

The stately Kirsten Flagstad had a much bigger voice and a better technique. Frida Leider commanded the heroic challenges–Isolde and Brunnhilde–that eluded her. Maria Jeritza was more glamorous, more temperamental. Elisabeth Rethberg mastered the lofty Verdi heroines that she avoided.

Still, Lotte Lehmann was unique.

Tenors loved her. “Che bella magnifica voce!” exclaimed Enrico Caruso, who wanted to sing Don Jose to her Micaela. Leo Slezak said “she possessed our secret weapon–the only one we have: heart.” Lauritz Melchior simply called her “ My Sieglinde.”

Conductors loved her. Otto Klemperer, Franz Schalk, Bruno Walter, Richard Strauss and Hans Knappertsbusch sang her praises lustily, and they represented just a small part of a large chorus. Arturo Toscanini found her so appealing, off stage as well as on, that he permitted her the indulgence of a downward transposition in Fidelio’s “Abscheulicher.”

Composers loved her. Citing her “rare fusion of a soulful voice with excellent articulation of the text with genial force of expression and a lovely stage appearance,” Richard Strauss insisted that she sing the premieres of his revised “Ariadne auf Naxos,” his “Frau ohne Schatten” and “Intermezzo.” He was willing, moreover, to temporarily sanction any liberties she would take with the vocal line.

Puccini felt that she was the first soprano who really could validate his “Suor Angelica.” That she did so in the wrong language was irrelevant.

Audiences adored her, from her debut as a bit player in Hamburg in 1910 to her years as a reigning diva in Vienna to her career as a song specialist throughout America to her extended farewells in Southern California.

A final performance of her signature role, the Marschallin in “Der Rosenkavalier,” took place with the San Francisco Opera in Los Angeles on Nov. 1, 1946. (The Times review, dated Nov. 2, doesn’t even mention the milestone.) Her valedictory recital followed five years later in Pasadena. The masses continued to adore her in old age as she performed–the verb is emphatically accurate–in public master classes.

Even critics adored her, most of the time. A Beckmesser or two may have lamented her tendency to approximate pitches or distort rhythms as she sacrificed precision to passion. Others worried about her top tones in later years, or her eagerness to usurp lieder that tradition had assigned exclusively to male voices. A few iconoclasts groused that she conveyed housewifely decency even when she wanted to be very complex and very grand.

But no one doubted her profound poetic instincts or took her interpretive rapture for granted. No one questioned the radiance of her tone or the generosity of her spirit.

Lehmann was capable of disarmingly candid self-appraisal. Possibly protesting too much, she liked to admit that her technique was somewhat erratic, especially in matters of breath control. Although she enjoyed a splendid success at the Vienna premiere of Puccini’s “Turandot” in 1926, she said she took greater pleasure in the performance of Maria Nemeth, her alternate in the strenuous title role.

Still, she knew her strengths. “I am a person,” she declared, “who cannot do anything without being totally, compulsively devoted to the effort.”

The effort eventually embraced lecturing, writing, painting and stage directing as well as singing. After Lehmann died at her beloved home in Santa Barbara on Aug. 26, 1976, aficionados everywhere continued to worship her. Fanatics with long and/or rose-colored memories dismissed such soprano whippersnappers as Reining, Bampton, Varnay, Schwarzkopf, Della Casa, Grummer, Steber, Crespin, Soderstrom, Rysanek, Jurinac and Altmeyer. “Very nice,” they invariably clucked, “but you didn’t see Lehmann.”

The world at large, however, proved somewhat fickle. Much of the huge but in many ways frustrating Lehmann discography lapsed into library limbo. A new, more inhibited generation of performers and audiences tended to find her art oddly effusive and dangerously old-fashioned. The ranks of the devout began to thin.

Lehmann would have been 100 on Feb. 27, 1988. It was, clearly, time for revival and reappraisal. It was time for a centennial celebration. UC Santa Barbara, which houses the exhaustive Lehmann archives, provided just that last weekend.

For three busy, potentially hypnotic days, the cold little concert hall–it happens to be called Lotte Lehmann Hall–in this mirage of a campus by the sea was warmed with lectures, concerts, multimedia presentations, panel discussions, fanciful seances and fancy tributes. An “official” biography was introduced. Paintings were exhibited. Rare recordings were played. Hyperbole flowed in sincere abundance.

Lehmann’s erstwhile students came to the shrine. Her friends, colleagues and associates came. Her disciples came. Who says nostalgia isn’t what it used to be?

Ironically, the people who didn’t come turned out to be the ones who could have benefited most from the illustrious examples and poignant testimonials. The crowds, though vastly enthusiastic, were disappointingly small and distinctly mature. Despite the scholarly ambiance, one saw few young faces.

After the inaugural ceremonies on Friday, Maurice Abravanel took the podium. Now 85, he offered vivid recollections of his collaborations with Lehmann, as conductor and as administrator at the Music Academy of the West. He spoke with extraordinary warmth of her impetuosity and her flexibility. He invoked the poetic excitement of her creations and confirmed the prosaic insignificance of her miscalculations.

He was the first of many speakers to stress the singer’s concern for the word and its telling inflection. “With Lehmann,” he said, “expression was everything.”

Variations on this reverential theme were immediately provided, via videotape, by Dolores M. Hsu, UCSB music department chairman; Gwendolyn Koldofsky, Lehmann’s longtime accompanist, and Frances Holden, Lehmann’s muse, companion, rock of Gibraltar and personal Brangane.

Beaumont Glass, erstwhile assistant to Lehmann at the Academy and now head of the opera department at the University of Iowa, offered a thoughtful preview of his new biography of the soprano (Capra Press, Santa Barbara: $18.95).

Paradox clouded the picture that night when Carol Neblett, who for a short time had coached repertory with Lehmann, offered a recital in her mentor’s honor. Contrary to the exalted Lehmann tradition, Neblett sang over-familiar music of Schubert, Brahms, Debussy and Strauss with much luminous tone and little interpretive insight. The words counted for little, and the subtleties behind the words counted for less.

Ironically, Neblett’s duochromatic delivery and chronically glamorous image suggested nothing so much as a latter-day incarnation of Lehmann’s arch-rival, Maria Jeritza.

The symposium reached its high point Sunday morning with a brilliant paper presented by Richard Exner of the Santa Barbara faculty. This imposing literary authority chose a subject–the strange but mutually enriching relationship between Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal–that bore only a tangential relationship to Lehmann. However, Exner explored that subject, and its capricious arguments regarding the relative impact of word and music, with probing wit and contextual wisdom.

Edward Downes completed this most stimulating session with personal recollections of the prima donna in Europe. He mentioned that Lehmann claimed to admire Flagstad’s singing but found her Scandinavian colleague cold. He also mentioned, conversely, that the essentially prim and placid Flagstad admired Lehmann’s singing but found that she enacted Sieglinde “as if doing a striptease.”

To belie the notion that Lehmann always had difficulties with her top voice, the visiting musicologist played an early recording of Butterfly’s entrance aria. Lehmann rode the crest of the climax to an effortless, gleaming high D-flat. It elicited a collective gasp.

Betraying his own special fondness for Lehmann, Downes admitted that the heart-bedecked tie around his neck had been an impulsive mid-interview gift from the prima donna some 50 years ago. It elicited wild applause.

The afternoon session found Beaumont Glass returning to recount Lehmann’s concert career. At the end, he played the famous recording of “An die Musik” as sung by the soprano at her final New York recital. Choked with emotion, she was unable to utter the last grateful apostrophe to her art: “Ich danke dir.” Even now, 37 years after the event, this remains a wrenching document of renunciation.

Redundancy began to set in as Alan Rich, music critic of the Herald Examiner, traced the evolution of Lehmann’s art through successive recordings of the same material. One had to admire his sentimental enthusiasm even if one could disagree with his premise–”She became a more conscious singer with age.”

The concert Sunday night, interesting if not entirely successful, was a ghostly experiment devoted to the monumental “Winterreise.” Some 400 slides allowed us to examine Lehmann’s pretty, naive illustrations–in toto and in nervously changing detail–on a big screen. Meanwhile, Lehmann’s isolated recordings of the songs that comprise Schubert’s tragic cycle were pieced together for a less than cumulative sound track. Under these contrived circumstances, the comic-bookish, essentially amateurish paintings somehow managed to overwhelm the pathos of the music and obscure the ardent professionalism of the singing.

On Monday, Gary Hickling, a bassist of the Honolulu Symphony, offered an illuminating, obsessive glimpse into the Lehmann discography. Then the houselights went down and a shadowy, elderly Lehmann appeared in film clips from her famous master classes. She impersonated a melodramatic Ortrud for an innocent student mezzo. With minimal prodding, she enacted the Marschallin’s entire monologue while croaking the vocal line an octave or two below the normal terrain.

She exuded eloquence and savoir-faire. Music and the theater obviously were in her blood. The sound of applause, she often admitted, was irresistible to her. The documents are important.

Still, one must question their educational value. Lehmann reportedly exhorted her students not to copy her. In her classes, however, she seemed to prefer demonstrating to teaching.

Here, she would say, you smile. Here, you take three steps, raise an arm and look upward. . . .

It looked terrific when she did it. It looked silly when those nice, ultra-American kids imitated her.

The symposium closed with seven of Lehmann’s erstwhile students joining in an awe-inspired if not awe-inspiring panel discussion. Significantly, only one of the participants, the soprano Kay Griffel, had gone on from the Lehmann classroom to a reasonably substantial career.

Actually, many singers attended Lehmann’s classes. But none emerged as an artist who could even approach Lehmann’s stature. If Lehmann knew her own secrets, she did not know how to pass them on. [Many successful singers who worked with Lehmann would disagree: Jeannine Altmeyer, Lucine Amara, Karan Armstrong, Judith Beckman(n), Grace Bumbry, William Cochran, Marilyn Horne, Lotfi Mansouri, Mildred Miller, Norman Mittelmann, Thomas Moser, Carol Neblett, Maralin Niska, Harve(y) Presnell, Marcella Reale, and Benita Valente]

The evidence suggests that she was not a great teacher. Nor, for that matter, does she seem to have been a great writer or a great painter. It doesn’t matter.

She was a great singing actress. That is enough.

We can see it clearly now.

Famous Photographers

When I recently discovered that Lotte Lehmann’s 1947 photograph taken by George Platt Lynes is in the National Portrait Gallery, it reminded me that she had been photographed a lot throughout her life. Many of the photos were taken by Europe and America’s most important portrait photographers: F.F. Bauer (1903-1972), Bettmann (1903-1998), E. Bieber (1878-1962), Caputo, DeBellis, Dietrich, Dührkoop (1873-1929), Edwards, Ellinger (1860-1940), Fayer (1892-1950), Fleischhut (1881-1951), Fleischmann (1895-1990), Foka, Löwy (1883-1938), Maillard-Kesslere (1894-1979), McCombe, Meintner-Graf (1899-1973), Mélancon, Mocsigay, Orkin, Rothmaier, Setzer (aka Tschiedel-Setzer), Skall (1884-1942), and Willinger (1879-1943). But there were also several creative art photographers who took time to set up special elements for the shot. Besides George Platt Lynes (1907-1955), there were Edward Steichen (1879-1973), Horst P. Horst (Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann) (1906-1999), Stadler (for whom I found no information), and other creative photographers. If you know the identity of the un-attributed artists, please let me know. One of the Steichen photos of Lehmann as the Marschallin appeared in Vanity Fair first in 1935 and again in a 1992 Flashback with a text you may read here.

LL at the New Met

We have a short (interrupted) interview with Mme Lehmann (preceded by the First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson).

Recital Photos

Recently we received many newly discovered photos of Lehmann in Salzburg recitals with Bruno Walter.

Biography in Music: Lehmann

Francis Robinson, with many connections to the Metropolitan Opera recorded a Biography in Music to celebrate Lehmann’s 80th birthday and broadcast it on 2/24/1968. Here’s background information on Mr. Robinson:

Francis Robinson began his career in the theater as an usher at the Ryman Auditorium while he was studying at Vanderbilt. He received his B.A. from Vanderbilt in 1932 and his M.A. in 1933. He went on to spend more than thirty years at the Metropolitan Opera where he served variously as tour director, assistant manager, press representative, and host of Saturday afternoon broadcasts from the Met.

Robinson began appearing on the popular “Texaco Opera Quiz” in the 1950s, which aired during radio broadcasts of Met performances, but on February 27, 1960, he came into his own on the Metropolitan Opera broadcast with a musical biography of Enrico Caruso. Using his own extensive collection of Caruso recordings and materials, Robinson put together a twenty-minute program honoring the great tenor. It was a huge success, and that broadcast was the impetus for a series by Robinson called “Biographies in Music” that took place during the third intermission of the Met’s Saturday broadcasts. In introducing Robinson and the series, Milton Cross, host of the Metropolitan Opera broadcast, said that the musical biography of Enrico Caruso was “so moving and brought so many requests for more musical biographies that we have persuaded Mr. Robinson to do a series of such broadcasts for us.” In 1978, Robinson became host for the Live from the Met telecast series, continuing to reach out to opera audiences around the country.  He wrote program notes for more than 100 RCA Red Seal albums. The Francis Robinson Collection of Theatre, Music and Dance was given to the Vanderbilt Libraries in 1980. 

Studio Portrait

Just when I begin to think that I’ve see. all of Lehmann’s studio portraits, a new one arrives. This early one has a contemplative feeling about it.

LL’s Tiles

Lehmann was fascinated with painting on tiles. She painted opera scenes, abstracts, and portraits. Two of her abstract tiles were recently offered on eBay.

TIME Magazine 1934

Music: I Am Success

In the little German town of Perleberg some 30 years ago a lusty argument went on between a round-faced, pig-tailed girl and her practical, hard-working father. The child was determined to be a singer. The father wanted her to teach school to be sure of getting a pension in her old age. When Lotte Lehmann’s singing days are done she will get a pension from the proud Vienna Opera where she is a Member of Honor. By the time she sailed for Europe this week many a hard-to-please New Yorker was convinced that hers is the most beautiful soprano voice of the day. 

In the U. S. this winter Lotte Lehmann has given 22 concerts, made her radio debut as Toscanini’s chosen soloist and sung three times at the Metropolitan Opera House. Her last Metropolitan performance coincided last week with the conclusion of the Wagner Cycle (TIME, Feb. 12). The opera was Die Meistersinger and Eva who has always seemed a dull heroine suddenly bloomed forth as a charming young person, very much in love. Critics who marvel at the warm eloquence of Lotte Lehmann’s singing, the contralto richness that holds to the highest notes, again complained because they had to wait so long to hear her at the Metropolitan. Chicago had her for a few performances in 1931 and 1932. From Vienna, Salzburg, Paris and London have come ecstatic reports of her Leonore in Fidelio, her Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. New Yorkers who had heard her only in Lieder suddenly wanted to know more about this stately youthful person who could act as well as sing. During her first years in opera her father never let Lotte Lehmann forget that school-teaching would have been easier and safer. She studied in Berlin, got a contract with the Hamburg Opera where for many months she did bit parts, studying the big roles by herself. One day the prima donna who was to sing in Lohengrin suddenly fell ill and Lotte Lehmann took her place. In her fright she forgot all the hidebound traditions, the routine gestures. But she was so young and unaffected, her voice so richly expressive, that the Hamburgers wanted to hear her in other big parts. She was singing Micaela in Carmen one night while the Vienna Opera director sat in the audience. He had come to find a new tenor but next day the tenor was forgotten and Lehmann was shakily signing a contract which she never stopped to read. 

In Vienna, her headquarters for 18 years, Lotte Lehmann has sung some 50 roles in German, French, Italian. In Vienna also she became Frau Otto Krause. Her husband, a tall important-looking insurance director, travels with her to the U. S., complains only of her tremendous energy. She will get up at 7 o’clock in the morning no matter how late she goes to bed. Herr Krause speaks little English but when he hears his wife’s praises he taps his big chest and says impressively: “Yes. with her it is all from the heart.” 

In New York Lotte Lehmann lives simply at the Essex House facing Central Park. She keeps no maid, shops at Macy’s. There last week she bought coffee and stockings to take home to her friends. Two New York friendships of which she is particularly proud are with Arturo Toscanini and Geraldine Farrar. Toscanini, who has small patience with most singers, goes to all her performances. She did not recognize Farrar when first she saw her in the front row at her last year’s concert. The oldtime singer was listening so intently, so sympathetically that Lehmann found herself addressing every song to her. 

Because she does not go in for backstage tantrums or lug around pet jaguars (see p. 32) Lotte Lehmann rarely makes the news columns. She does not advertise her diet which consists mostly of fruit and vegetables, a glass of sherry before she goes on stage. She keeps dogs and cats in her Vienna home but not in her dressing-room. To every performance she takes photographs of her father, mother, grandmother, brother, husband, kisses them all for luck. 

Because her singing has such abundant feeling New Yorkers have wondered if she would not make an ideal Isolde, but Lotte Lehmann knows her limitations, says she would be exhausted before the first act was over. She is more conceited about her horseback riding and her writing than about her singing. Traveling from Buffalo to Havana lately she wrote 3,000 words describing her reaction to the country, the Cuban excitement over new President Carlos Mendieta. Her piece was published in the New York Staats-Zeitung. 

One of her books. Verse und Prose, has been published in Vienna. Berlin publishers have the first installments of her autobiography but she doubts if it will ever be released. They want her to add chapters on her U. S. triumphs. Says Mme Lehmann: “I would not feel very intelligent to sit down and write over and over again I am success, I am success. I am success.’ ‘

L.A. Times

Arabella Photos

Since Lehmann only performed the role of Arabella five times (all for the Vienna Opera), we have few photos. Here’s what I’ve been able to accumulate, including a few from live performances.

Drawings and…

 A European collector is offering the following: a lovely book done by hand. It takes excerpts from Lehmann’s My Many Lives in German translation. It is typed. But what is most lovely about it are the original paintings/drawings which the author of this has done of Lehmann in her different roles. The book also contains original photographs with Bruno Walter and Dusolina Giannini, as well as newspaper and magazine clippings. Take a look- https://photos.app.goo.gl/xhcyynG4UX7Um3ni9

Below are examples of some of the drawings. If you wish to purchase these things Contact Me and I’ll supply you with the information needed.

Lehmann as Angelica

In an extensive July 2024 article for the Australian Book Review on Puccini’s Il Trittico, Michael Halliwell, baritone and scholar, wrote the following: “It was in Vienna, largely due to Lotte Lehmann’s performance in the title role, that Suor Angelica began to attract more success; this was Puccini’s favorite of the three works…”

Unknown Photos

Artist’s Charcoal & Pastel

Susan Byrne of The Byrne Gallery in Middleburg, Virginia wrote that she has a client who has a charcoal and pastel sketch for the 1952 oil portrait of Lehmann by Lithuanian portraitist, Niko Schattenstein. The final oil portrait hangs in the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She has kindly permitted us to see this excellent portrait.

Here’s the final oil version as used by Dr. Glass for the cover of his Lehmann biography.

Lehmann views the Schattenstein painting.

Saba-Gold Cards

With a fad similar to collecting stamps, in the early 20th century a cigarette company offered “tobacco cards” of various subjects, whether planes, famous people, or stage stars. They included opera stars such as Lotte Lehmann, with their autographs. Actually they offered two cards of Lehmann, the first one as Eva (from Die Meistersinger) and the second one as Sieglinde (from Die Walküre). The photos were colorized and the original photographer was credited.

Black and white was the most common form of photos, but it added allure to any photo, whether a collector cigarette card or not, to be colorized. Here are some of the other Lehmann photos in their colorized versions.

Enthusiastic Review

Lehmann’s agents and promoters could hardly have written a more positive review than this one from Sydney, Australia’s Wireless Weekly where Curt Prerauer wrote the following for the section called “The Music Critic”.

SYDNEY: Friday, May 7, 1937.   THE MUSIC CRITIC 

LOTTE LEHMANN gave her first recital in the Town Hall, Thursday, April 22. Any expectations, however high they may have been, were surpassed by the singer’s art. We have been hearing many artists, some of them of the “world-famous” kind, in recent years, but, with the exception of a conductor, nobody came near the impression Mme. Lehmann made upon me. I knew her from Berlin, but the new impression (which I knew only from hearsay) was that Mme. Lehmann is as perfect as a singer of lieder as she is on the operatic stage. Again it struck me how much feeling pulses in every word she pronounces. It is not an expression she has “learnt,” but an expression that she must give, and were it even in spite of herself. But this is not the case either, because Mme. Lehmann emanates such a wonderful personality that nobody can help being impressed by it. Every word emerge in its most secret meaning, she has thought about every tiniest shade of color a vowel, a consonant must get in order to convey the spirit of the music and the words, and it is the highest fulfilment of art I have ever heard. I should not hesitate to make a most daring comparison: Lotte Lehmann is the Toscanini among singers. Her expression, with which I have dealt first, because expression is the main thing in music, while being as perfect as it can be, makes never the impression of coming from the brain. The whole, wonderful, sweet person Lotte Lehmann seems to consist of nothing but expression, whether she sings or talks, or whether you are simply contented with looking at her. Her technique (but this should go without saying) is as perfect as her expression. It shows complete mastership of top, lower, and middle register, as a matter of fact, there are no differences noticeable at all. Her manners with the audience, though she has sung a lot in America, are as natural as possible, and perhaps this forms a part of the terrific impression she makes upon us all: One feels always personally addressed by her, and not from the platform to the audience, but as from one human being to the other. Lotte Lehmann’s art of building a programme is wonderful and corresponds to the highest standards everywhere. That she had to put in two operatic items was not her fault, but that of the A.B.C. [Australian Broadcasting Corporation], which asked her to do so. Lotte Lehmann agreed, of course. Among her items were some of the “old war-horses.” She is right in including them. She leads them back to the time when they were still fresh and young war-horses. Should one sing them? Of course, one should, if one is able to sing them, to interpret them as Lotte Lehmann does. Only in the mouth of the average artist they are unbearable and hackneyed. Let me make it a strong point: Unless you are able to sing them as Lehmann does, keep away. (And you are not able to do it in the same way, you know?) Among her songs, however, were also some which were produced for the first time in Australia; an extra (“Heimkehr vom Feste.” by Leo Blech) proved to be a most charming children’s song (I have wished to hear it again, oh, how long), one item by Emoe Balogh, and one by Emmy Worth, the latter an extra. I should like to write still many things about this greatest singer the world seems to have at present, and yet I do not know where to start. No word of highest praise is adequate to depict the deep, deep emotion which is transferred upon the listener by Lotte Lehmann’s wonderful art. Perhaps we come nearest by saying that she is the impersonation of art itself. Lotte Lehmann’s accompanist is Mr. Ulanowsky. He played Schumann and Brahms. I have often talked, in these columns, about how to play composers of the romanticist period, with a certain amount of freedom (but not licence), and yet so that the original rhythm is not marred. You will know what I mean when listening to Mr. Ulanowsky. Also when listening to him I had the feeling to lean back in my chair (which is too uncomfortable, however) and simply to enjoy myself. As an extra we heard part of a Viennese waltz by Johann Strauss, which was played as only Viennese people can play it, the slight sentimentality, smiling at itself, unpretentious, charming, and incomparably beautiful. As an accompanist, Mr. Ulanowsky is equally perfect, the balance between him and Mme. Lehmann being ideal throughout the night.

Letter to Alma

Here we have the transcription of a letter that Lehmann wrote to Alma Mahler-Werfel. In 1902 Alma married Mahler who died in 1911; in 1915 she married architecht Walter Gropius from whom she divorced in 1920; in 1929 she married author/novelist Franz Werfel, who died in 1945. Lehmann sang at the funeral of Franz Werfel at Pierce Brothers Mortuary, Hollywood, with Bruno Walter, piano; they performed Schubert Lieder. (Werfel died on 26 August 1945; we don’t know if the funeral was held in August or September. The letter below doesn’t seem to be dated.)

Dear Ms. Alma –

blessed with beauty and spirit, they made these gifts the servants of a selfless ambition: to give inspiration to the two great men, who linked their lives to yours and to whom you were a beloved companion until the end. May the memory of this close yesterday ring back to you as a warm melody for many years to come – and may it transfigure and make today and tomorrow happy for you.

Lotte Lehmann

Santa Barbara

The Music Academy of the West

National Portrait Gallery

Lotte Lehmann has a photo of her, taken in 1947 by George Platt Lynes (15 April 1907–6 December 1955). The technical information: Medium: Gelatin silver print; Dimensions: Image/Sheet: 23.4cm x 18.8cm (9 3/16 x 7 3/8); Place: Santa Barbara; Credit Line: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Gift of Donald Windham; Object number: S/NPG.94.267.

Artificial Intelligence & LL

After hearing a lot about AI, it seemed time to test the function of ChatGPT 3.5 on some Lotte Lehmann questions. First, I asked about Lehmann’s students. Here’s the response.

There’s no way to know how AI called Schwarzkopf one of Lehmann’s students. Perhaps because she was the next renouned Marshallin, but nothing else. Grace Bumbry was the one correct listing. As for Risë Stevens, the mixup could have occurred because Stevens sang Octavian to Lehmann’s Marschallin. King’s years were 1925-2005, and though he sang a lot of Wagner and Strauss operas, it was decades after Lehmann’s career. One possible connection is that he studied to change from a baritone to a tenor with Martial Singher, who followed Lehmann teaching at the Music Academy of the West (where King did not study!) Another is that he made his debut as a tenor with Marilyn Horne (an unaknowledged by AI student of Lehmann).

The second question I asked ChatGPT was about Lehmann’s teachers. The first one, Mathilde Mallinger is correct and there were no other teachers of such importance in Lehmann’s life. Of the second listing, Etta Hagens, I can learn nothing. Lehmann never lived or studied in Prague. Marie Gutheil-Schoder (1874-1935) never taught Lehmann. She was already well-known at the Vienna Opera when Lehmann arrived, and Lehmann regarded the elder singer highly. There is no mention of Marie Gutheil-Schoder teaching in Berlin. There is no way I can account for the error of the last two.

The final question I addressed to AI was how to find “reliable” information on Lehmann. The only biography mentioned, Lotte Lehmann: A Life in Opera and Song was written by Beaumont Glass, not Elizabeth L. Norman! I can uncover no connection of Ms. Norman with either Glass or Lehmann. There are two other Lehmann biographies that are available, but not mentioned by ChatGPT.

Winterreise in Michigan

Here’s a recently discovered photo of Lehmann after a Winterreise performance in 1948. Among the young ladies is Bethany Beardsley, who went on to a fine career in song.

Nelson Eddy

Lehmann was always a movie fan, but the following information can explain her connection to Nelson Eddy, a singing film star. “Eddy was ‘discovered’ by Hollywood when he substituted at the last minute for the noted diva Lotte Lehmann at a sold-out concert in Los Angeles on February 28, 1933. He scored a professional triumph with 18 curtain calls, and several film offers immediately followed. After much agonizing, he decided that being seen on screen might boost audiences for what he considered his ‘real work’, his concerts. (Also, like his machinist father, he was fascinated with gadgets and the mechanics of the new talking pictures.) Eddy’s concert fee rose from $500 to $10,000 per performance.” Later Lehmann coached Jeanette MacDonald who appeared in many of the movies with Eddy. MacDonald actually did sing a few opera performances. After their seventh teaming in Bittersweet did not fare as well in the box office the previous year, MGM decided to split Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald for their next films. Nelson was given his choice of leading lady and he picked Risë Stevens of the Metropolitan Opera. So, in the second photo which shows Lehmann in the same hat etc. as seen with Eddy, you’ll see her with her real opera co-star (she sang Octavian to Lehmann’s Marschallin) on the set for the MGM movie The Chocolate Soldier (1941).

LL’s Vocal Registers

Conrad Osborne has a blog called Osborne on Opera: A Critical Blog that in 2017 featured a six part series on “Lotte Lehmann and the Bonding of the Registers” that isn’t as technical as it sounds. It’s an interesting read. Osborne has a series of articles on soprano Lisa Davidson whom he compares with Lotte Lehmann. Another extensive article on Lehmann was inspired by the second set of her recordings by Marston Records.

Thomas Mann’s Favorites

You’ll notice that two of Lehmann’s recordings made his “favorites” list. He was also personal friends with both Lehmann and Bruno Walter. Below: a photo of them all together. You can read (and listen to) the list of favorite Lehmann recordings from a vast array of people.

A More Interesting Singer

In the March/April 2024 edition of Fanfare magazine you’ll find a review by Henry Fogel in which he recalls the reason that Flagstad chose a tenor instead of Melchior: “The reason for this was that Flagstad, whose power at the Met was extraordinary, was upset with Melchior after he implied to an interviewer that Lotte Lehmann was a more interesting singer.”

Good and Mixed Reviews

The first recently discovered review of one of Lehmann’s recitals is glowing with positive thoughts on many aspects of her singing. The second review includes some serious complaints but ends upbeat. The first has no attribution, the second only the initials: HTP.

Review of Recital in St. Louis on 13 Jan 1933

“One of the greatest personalities in the field of music made her first appearance in St. Louis last night when Lotte Lehmann, dramatic soprano, gave a song recital in Howard Hall, the Principia. The size and scope of her artistic gifts become apparent as soon as she starts singing but the impression deepens as song succeeds song until finally it has become a transfiguring experience. The voice by itself, with its depth, resonance and power, is galvanic in its effect, but the voice as an agent of her intellect and temperament brings an exhilaration that immediately makes all of the life about one more intense and more significant.”

Review of Recital in Boston on 8 or 9 March 1934

“…Mme. Lehmann’s singing of Brahms’ ‘Meine Liebe ist grün’, and his ‘Der Schmied’ …were examples of overpossession and over-projection to the detriment of voice and song. So also with Schumann’s ‘Ich grolle nicht’ which is one of her battle horses, to be ridden a little harder each time she mounts it. In a song that moves quick-paced, full-toned and in high emotion, Mme. Lehmann may hardly resist the temptation to force the note. There were as many songs in which she sang with an equal fineness of perception and tone, of matter and manner – – – say her simplicity with Schubert’s ‘An eine Quelle’; her musing grace with Franz’s ‘Für Musik,’ her light and tender humor with Wolf’s ‘In dem Schatten meiner Locken,’ her nostalgic melancholy with Strauss’s autumnal ‘Aller Seelen.’ In other pieces there were phrases and periods that she turned with apt and instant felicity; in which she gained both depth and sweep of tone – – – as in Wolf’s ‘Gesang Weylas’; once more in which she evoked passing images graphically; wrought them as well into an ever-expanding whole. The excesses and the shortcomings may stand as written, but the concert, by and large, was restoration of the art of lieder singing to a public that here or elsewhere in America may now seldom enjoy it.” H.T. P.

Her Poems as Song

We have long known that many composers set Lehmann’s poems as Lieder, but the set written by conductor/composer Robert Heger for voice and orchestra was unknown to us. Here’s the first and last page of the score and you’ll notice the date: 1944. Here’s more information about this work:

“Fünf Gesänge nach Versen von Lotte Lehmann, für mittlere Stimme und Orchester op.24″. The work was first composed in a version for medium voice and piano in 1933. This version was immediately published by Universial Edition. The orchestral version was created in 1944 and according to the autograph, finished on 31 December 1944. The work consists of five poems by Lotte Lehmann: 1. Ihr meine lieben sonnenhellen Träume, 2. Du den ich wachend nie gesehen, 3. Ich gehe mit geschlossnen Augen, 4. Die wilden Vögel meiner Sehnsucht and 5. So wie ein Schwan. The orchestral version calls for a large orchestra with harp and the work last around 18 minutes.

The world premiere of the orchestral version took place on 9 December 1951 with the Studio-Orchester Beromünster under Robert Heger and the soloist Ria Ginster (soprano). Subsequent performances followed nearly each year with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in Munich in the 1950s and 1960s. It is unknown when and by whom the world premiere of the original piano version was given.

A fan has recently written to ask about the other composers who were inspired by Lehmann’s poems. Here’s the list: Wilhelm Kienzl, Paul Redl, W.G. James, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Léo Sachs, Felix Weingartner (An den Schmerz) (a song cycle dedicated to Lehmann), and Otto Klemperer: “Gebet für eine Singstimme und Klavier” September 20, 1946. In celebration of the Lehmann Centennial, Thomas Pasatieri wrote a piece for voice and piano to eight of Lehmann’s poems. He later orchestrated the work.

New Handbills

Newsreel of Lehmann

Frank Manhold, radio announcer in Munich and source for many Lehmann-related items, recorded his own TV as it showed some films from the 1930s of Lehmann with Bruno Walter, Toscanini etc. Not great sound or visuals, but a rare chance to see Lehmann in a casual mood.

Photos

Our great contact in Vienna, Herr Clausen, has sent us the contact information for the Vienna Radio magazine of Lehmann’s era. Besides offering a lot of new information about her recitals, concerts, and opera performances, there are photos that are new to us.

In Comparison

Philip Tsaras reviewed the new CD of Harriet Burns, who along with her pianist, Ian Tindale, were recent winners of the Contemporary Song Prize in the International Vocal Competition at ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Tsaras offers praise for the “sheer beauty of Burn’s voice” and writes: “Comparisons are invidious, but perhaps inevitable, and it was the same story with most of the other songs I sampled in different performances. I would like more characterisation and personality in Die Männer sind méchant and that is what we get from, for instance, Lotte Lehmann…I sampled a few more versions of one of the most well-known songs here Der Jüngling and der Quelle and it was to find that Elisabeth Schumann, Lotte Lehmann,…are all more communicative with the text and much more specific in their response to it.”

Poetry in Translation

In the February 2024 edition of The Offing magazine you can read an English translation of Lehmann’s poems from her 1923 book called Verse in Prosa. The complete poems in that book (in the original German) can be found here.

Mention in Fanfare

In the January/February 2024 issue of Fanfare magazine, Raymond Beegle has problems with the baritone Florian Boesch and writes, “…still one is not so deeply convinced, or drawn into the atmosphere of the texts, as one is when hearing Stéphane Degout sing Stille Tränen in his recent Paris recital, or Lotte Lehmann when she sang Alte Laute in New York at her final concert.” Here’s Lehmann’s Alte Laute from her Farewell Recital in Town Hall in 1951.

1936 Recital Program

• Here’s a Lehmann recital program from March 3, 1936, one of the recitals missing from the Chronology. Note that instead of Ernö Balogh, her regular pianist during this time, Richard Tetley-Kardoz, a name unknown to me, is listed as the accompanist..

Review with a Cold

• Lehmann sang many recitals at Town Hall shortly before the “Farewell” one on February 16, 1951. Here’s a review of one of them that appeared on January 29, 1951.

1936 Recital Program

• Here is the cover page of one of Lehmann’s 1936 recitals.

Early Masterclass

• Thanks to Lehmann fan Dr. Schornstein, we have an early (1947?) until-now-unknown photo of a Lehmann master class at the Music Academy of the West. It’s interesting to note Lehmann’s usual intensity and that her hair isn’t yet grey.

888-1976).”

Radio Interview (auf Deutsch)

• For the German speaker we have a radio interview with Lehmann recorded in January 1963 that, among other things, covers her work as a director of Der Rosenkavalier at the Met. Called “Lotte Lehmann sucht das Menschliche in der Oper” (Lotte Lehmann seeks humanity in opera).

Sharp Photos

• It’s always rewarding to discover unusual photos of Lehmann. One is familiar, a studio portrait dated 1916 of Lehmann as the Composer from Ariadne auf Naxos by Strauss. The reason that I’m offering it is that it’s one of the best preserved, offering a lot of detail. The second photo is from the opposite side of Lehmann’s career in which she sang and acted as the mother of Danny Thomas, one of the characters you’ll see in the second photo that is new to me. The name of the MGM movie was Big City and the photo is from 1948.

1958 Master Class

• Here’s a summary of Lehmann’s master classes at the Music Academy of the West in 1958, sent by Lois Alba.

James Standard sings Ravel’s Chanson épique from the Don Quichotte à Dulcinée set.

Grace Bumbry sings Der Tod das ist die kühle Nacht by Brahms.

Charles Buffam sings Und willst du deine Liebster sterben sehen by Wolf.

Lois Alba sings Brahms’ Feinsliebchen, du sollst mir nicht barfuß geh´n.

An unnamed baritone sings an Italian song.

Kay Griffel sings Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben and Du Ring an meinem Finger from Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben; LL: talks of not letting down just when you stop…and vowels. Demo

A tenor sings Die Mainacht by Brahms. LL: too explosive… “pipe down a little bit.”

Patricia Jennings sings Debussy’s La chevelure. LL: not sentimental; a spoken demo; “more with eyes.”

Joan Winden sings Botschaft by Brahms.

Lois Alba sings Schubert’s Im Abendrot. LL demos “vater”. After Lois is through LL gives her ideas, but they’re only suggestions. That Lois has her way with the song as well.

Bill Winden sings Verrat by Brahms. LL: “not so legato at the beginning.” Demo

Joan Winden sings Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgehn, the first of Mahler’s Kindentotenlieder. LL: “don’t start so loud”; Demo. LL: “life goes on.” “think of eternity.”

James Standard sings Ravel’s Chanson Romanesque from his set Don Quichotte à Dulcinée. LL: “too much reality,” “likable,” “enchanting for crazy exaggerations,” “more emotion,” “from fantasy to emotion.”

Kay McCracken (Duke) sings Mozart’s (really by Spies) Wiegenlied. LL: “a young frivolous mother.” Demo

New Outdoor Photos

• Here are some previously unknown photos of Lehmann outdoors. The outer two are in Salzburg.

New Mature Photo

• It’s amazing how often we find never-before-encountered photos of Lotte Lehmann!

Bruno Walter Tempo

• Dr. Schornstein, who often travelled with Lehmann in her later years, recalls the following bit of interesting/historical/musical conversation concerning a performance of Fidelio with Bruno Walter: Lehmann said, “I honestly forgot the slow tempo he preferred during the finale duet (and he was furious with me). He muttered, You like it, they like it, but I don’t like it.”

Receives Mozart Medal (auf Deutsch)

• You can listen to Lehmann’s response (in German) to receiving Salzburg’s Silver Mozart Medal in 1969.

Current Baritone Compared

• In the July/August 2023 issue of Fanfare magazine, Raymond Beegle writes the review for a new recording by baritone Konstantin Ingenpass. The opening paragraph reads: “It is a wonderful thing when an artist with a beautiful voice, a secure technique, intelligence and depth of soul, draws the listener’s attention away from all these virtues, and becomes the very wayfarer, or lover, or holy man he sings about. The young baritone Konstantin Ingenpass has the ability to perform such alchemy…Perhaps not since Lotte Lehman (sic) have we heard this power in such abundance as on this recording.”

Paper on LL’s Early Lieder Performances

• Marlina Deasy Hartanto submitted a paper on Lehmann called “Exploring Expressive Lied Performance: Re-enacting Lotte Lehmann’s Pre-World War II Lied Performances,” as a master project for the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague on November 9, 2021. We were able to access it at without charge at ResearchCatalogue.net on June 26, 2023. 

You can read this paper by going to https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/969662/1183012

There is no charge for accessing this work. The menu on the exposition page (or first page) appears when hovering with the mouse over the top of the page. Hovering on “content,” you will see the table of contents. Clicking on any of the items will direct you to the other pages.

Hartanto uses as examples of Lehmann‘s singing “An die Musik” and “Ich grolle Nicht” and assumes that they were recorded “acoustically” (using a horn instead of a microphone), but in each case, these were “electric” recordings, as were all of Lehmann‘s discs from 1927 on. The great advantage of a modern thesis paper is that the author can provide the very sound she wishes to analyze.

Lehmann in Exile

• Lotte Lehmann would be delighted to know of the University of Massachusetts Amherst PhD candidate Ester González. Originally from Spain, Ester studied classical music at the conservatory in her hometown, but was only vaguely familiar with Lehmann’s name and marvelous voice. She became interested in Lehmann later, as a PhD student in German Cultural Studies. While reading about Lehmann’s encounter with Hermann Göring in her autobiography, Ester was intrigued by Lehmann’s claim that music was international. Ester is fascinated by Lehmann’s notion of her art being different from that of her own country: “My blood is German, my whole being is rooted in the German soil. But my conception of art is different from that of my country.” [From the Postscript of the May, 1938 edition of Lehmann’s memoir, Midway in My Song.]

For her dissertation, Ester is studying the works of German/Austrian artists in U.S. exile during World War II, using five case studies in addition to Lehmann, including Kurt Weill and Stefan Zweig. She is analyzing their relation to/understanding of art and music, through a close, historically contextualized reading of selections from their works. She will then look at how music can be seen both as a national product and universal language.

Ester chose to focus on Lehmann’s novel (Orplid, mein Land, known in English as Midway in My Song) and novelette (On Heaven, Hell, and Hollywood). She was recently at UC Santa Barbara’s Special Collections Lehmann Archive, doing research for her dissertation chapter on Lehmann, and along the way she discovered some wonderful examples of Lehmann’s writing, which she shared with us for this website.

Recently Ester presented her work on Lehmann (Speaking of Music: The Transnational Writings of Lotte Lehmann Abroad) at the 2023 German Studies Association Conference in Houston, Texas. She wrote: “This is my first time talking about Lotte Lehmann and I am still learning about her, which so far has been a fascinating adventure. I hope to do her justice, as I really respect her work.”

Ester expects to defend her dissertation within the next 2–3 years. She hopes to eventually adapt its chapter on Lehmann to present at a future conference.

Photo with a Story

• Mike on Reddit posted the following with the photo of Lehmann that you’ll find below.

My Grandfather Earl was an orchid grower and cymbidium expert. He hybridized many orchids and became rather famous in his own right for helping bring cymbidiums to the Santa Barbara area.

Lotte Lehmann was a famous German opera singer who befriended my grandfather. He hybridized an orchid for her which he named after her. These (unfortunately) cut flowers are from that plant. Pretty cool family history!

Early Sighted Photo

• You’ll find a very early photo (hand colored) of Lehmann below that we haven’t encountered before.

Met Debut Review

• The “Parterre Box” celebrated the January 11, 1934 night that Lehmann made her Metropolitan Opera debut in what was called “the ideal Sieglinde” in Wagner’s Die Walküre with the review written by Leonard Liebling for the New York American:

Previously known here as a finished exponent of German Lieder in recital, Lotte Lehmann made her local operatic debut last evening at the Metropolitan as Sieglinde in “Die Walkuere.” Mme. Lehmann is no newcomer to the lyric stage, for at the Vienna Opera she has long been one of the adornments in Wagnerian and lesser soprano roles. Other European theatres and the late Chicago Civic Opera Company also are acquainted with Mme. Lehmann’s striking gifts in the realm of costumed song.

To tell the story of her achievement last night is to report a complete triumph of a kind rarely won from an audience at a Wagnerian occasion. The delighted auditors vented their feelings in a whirlwind of applause and a massed chorus of cheers. At the end of the first act Mme. Lehmann had half a dozen individual recalls and on every side one heard excited and rapturous comment. The stir made by the artist was in every way justified. Of statuesque figure and attractive features, Mme. Lehmann appealed to the eye as irresistibly as she wooed the ear. She has a full, rich voice, brilliant in the upper range and sensuously tinted in the middle register. It is a lyric-dramatic organ, ideal for the role of Sieglinde, and gives forth power as easily as it sounds the gentler accents.

More expressive, emotional, lovely singing has not been heard from any soprano at the Metropolitan for many a season, and, better still, Mme. Lehmann is musical and stylistic in the highest degree. A true Wagnerian artist whom the most diligent fault-finder would be estopped from faulting. In her acting, Mme. Lehmann interprets the impulsive, romanticist rather than the scheming woman who coldly plots the sleeping potion for her husband. Lissome, clinging, impassioned, here was the ideal Sieglinde to inflame Siegmund and sweep him to heroic deeds.

Two Fanfare Referrances

• Lotte Lehmann’s name appears in the November/December issue of Fanfare magazine. In the Classical Hall of Fame section Raymond Beegle writes positively about baritone Jochen Kupfer’s recording of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and writes “His genius as an actor outdistances every other recorded performance with the exception, perhaps, of Lotte Lehmann’s.  

• In the Fanfare magazine for September/October 2022 Henry Fogel writes about a Bruno Walter CD set from Immortal Performances recordings: “The two interviews of Lotte Lehmann recounting what Walter meant to her as a teacher are particularly illuminating.” In that same issue and reviewing the same set, Ken Melzer writes: “The final disc offers a broadcast memorial tribute to Walter by Neville Cardus, as well as interviews with soprano Lotte Lehmann…All of the interviewees have compelling personalities, and are gratifyingly forthcoming….” In a review of a recent release of Wagner’s Die Walküre Act I conducted by Christian Thielemann, Huntley Dent writes, “….Making comparisons with earlier recordings, one can draw a straight line heading downward from the classic Bruno Walter account with the Vienna Philharmonic (1935) to today. An age that saw Lotte Lehmann and Lauritz Melchior in the lead roles seems almost mythical to us now…”

Two Lehmann References

• In the May/June 2022 issue of Fanfare, Raymond Beegle reviews a recent release of mezzo soprano Magdalena Kozená singing songs including some Lieder of Brahms. He writes: …“‘My soul has the wings of a nightingale,’ she sings, but does one really believe her? When the words come from the lips of Lotte Lehmann or Christa Ludwig, there is no need to even ask the question. Of course, we believe. But how is it that the same intervals, the same vowels and consonants, rhythms, and tempos of these two past singers, tell us something that Magdalena Kozená does not, cannot tell us? What is it that these earlier singers have that she does not have? This listener guesses that it is wonder, and consequently, sincerity, that goes missing in this singer’s presentation of notes, so adroitly, so carefully cobbled together….”

In the same issue of Fanfare, Beegle is the critic of a recording of Schumann’s Frauenliebe und -leben sung by Alta Marie Boover. Beegle writes: “…When one thinks of the earlier recordings of Theresa Berganza and Lotte Lehmann, one finds Schumann’s Frau diminished and caricaturized here….”

•

What she said to her students

• In the March/April 2022 issue of Fanfare magazine: “…Roderick Williams is a polished singer with a pleasant voice. However, it is overly sweet, overly sentimental, overly ‘sensitive.’ One feels he is trying to convince the listener of his sincerity. ‘I don’t believe you!’ Lotte Lehmann used to say to her students.”

TIME ad 1950

Flagstad on Lehmann

• From the November/December 2021 Fanfare magazine: “Faulkner raises the not unlikely possibility that the Norwegian soprano [Kirsten Flagstad] was infuriated at an April 1937 article promoting Lotte Lehmann‘s return to New York, calling her ‘prima donna at the Met.’…It was Lehmann’s publicist who had placed the article, [not verified] and she was also Melchior’s publicist, causing Flagstad to argue with him about it. She retaliated by pressuring the Met’s general manager, Edward Johnson, to hire two additional Heldentenors, Carl Hartmann and Eyvind Laholm, neither of whom was even close to Melchior’s equal. Flagstad also disapproved of the specificity of Lehmann’s acting; when the two met backstage, Flagstad apparently told Lehmann that she did things on stage which only a married woman should do with her husband in the privacy of their bedroom….” –Henry Fogel

Bio & Drawing 1933

[Of course they won the next day…]

Fanfare Favorite

• Fanfare magazine’s Want List 2021 offers their readership the magazine’s critics’ four favorites of the year. Once again, the iBook series Lotte Lehmann & Her Legacy was selected. I write “once again” because the first volume of the now nine volume document, was chosen in 2016. Here are the words of David Cutler, one of Fanfare magazine’s reviewers: “These new iBooks on German soprano Lotte Lehmann, from expert Gary Hickling, are a very attractive proposition indeed. It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the wealth of material here, covering all aspects of Lehmann’s long life and career. The format is fresh, new, and inventive in covering the career of such an historical singer. What is wonderful is being able to click on the various examples of songs, masterclasses, or performances at the press of a finger! You can hear her as you read!”

Review of Marston Lehmann Box

• Here is a personal review of Marston’s latest Lehmann box by Henning Bert-Biel, a German who has lived most of his life in France.

I had time enough to listen to all the 6 CDs of the Lehmann-Box that is really a miracle. The presentation is extraordinary. Good articles and a lot of wonderful photographs, with many detailed explanations. One can’t give a better homage to Lehmann.

This wonderful soprano will be forever in the memory of humanity. It is important to edit CDs like that because our époque easily forgets great things.

I know well the records of Lehmann. When I compare the first discs to the records of 1927-33, I dare say that I love them all. The first group gives all the splendor of a unique voice, the second gives the maturity of a voice with an intelligence of musical expression and pronunciation. The timbre of Lehmann is unique. I like her especially in the German roles (Agathe, Rezia, Elisabeth, Elsa, Eva, Marschallin, Ariadne, Arabella). But that doesn’t mean that the other sides of her repertoire don’t please me. Her Rosalinde is great. Technically Schwarzkopf or Güden are perhaps a little bit more adapted to the great aria of Rosalinde, but none has this natural charm and sensuality of Lehmann. The Italian roles are wonderful. It is regrettable that she didn’t record them in Italian. I was every time astonished that Lehmann didn’t sing more Verdi. I imagine Lehmann as a wonderful Amelia (Ballo in Maschera).

The records of Lieder are sensational. I prefer it when they are accompanied only by piano, but even with the little orchestras Lehmann manages to give an outstanding interpretation. The two Christmas-Songs were for me a  revelation. Very often opera singers don’t manage very well to sing those Weihnachtslieder. Lehmann is unbelievable. She sings the songs with simplicity and reveals all the charm, all the magic of those melodies. It sends me back to my childhood and I had a great emotion. It is one of the great marks of Lehmann –this simplicity which in fact is not simplicity. There is no sophistication like Schwarzkopf, but it touches me more. (In spite of that Schwarzkopf is with Grümmer one of my darlings).

The Marschallin of Lehmann is a miracle. She is a woman who knows love, who is sensual and at the same time sensible, ironic, with a good heart and a good sense of reality. Her monolog from the first act is the best interpretation I know.

For me there is another role I cherish about all: Sieglinde. The records of acts 1 and 2 with Walter are monuments. Often I dream that –without Hitler and the Third Reich– they would have been a complete record of Die Walküre with my dream-cast: Lehmann, Melchior, Schorr, List, Leisner (or Branzell) and my beloved Frida Leider.

There are yet so many things to say: The “Wiegenlied” of Strauss, “Der Nussbaum” of Schuhmann, and, and, and…. It’s a pity that “Der Erlkönig” should have sung so quickly (even like this– Lehmann managed it well)…

The songs of her era are interpreted with a lot of charm. I understand that people loved those records. Unterhaltungsmusik (light music) is very difficult to interpret. Many singers do too much; Lehmann or Tauber do just what is necessary for those songs.

I could speak hours and hours about Lehmann and for sure I will read once more her autobiography and the other books I own:  My Many Lives and More than Singing.  The book by Wessling is interesting, but I prefer the other books. [Wessling’s books on Lehmann are filled with errors.]

Gary, you have accomplished a great thing. All my congratulations!!! If there is a life after the dead (I don’t believe it) Lehmann will be happy about this wonderful edition. 

Dalton Baldwin, an Eminence Among Accompanists, Dies at 87

Mentioned in Fanfare Review

• In the November/December 2019 issue of Fanfare magazine Raymond Beegle reviews a new art song CD of baritone Stéphane Degout and makes several complimentary references to Lehmann. “Like Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Lotte Lehmann, this French baritone found in the songs he chose to sing both words and music that were already in his heart, and that he seems ineluctably compelled to express.…” [Beegle refers to the fact that this is a live recording which adds to its intensity. He then writes:] “It brings to mind Lehmann’s last recital [actually there were a handful that followed], and though Degout is far from the end of his career, his artistry is undeniably equal to hers.…[T]he artists seem to say, ‘Here I am, why shouldn’t I tell you the truth?’ and in each case, the audience members, unified by what was given them, falls into rapt silence, as well they should. What they were hearing were performances of a lifetime.…[Toward the end of the article Beegle expresses his negative reaction to the sound engineering of Degout’s performance, writing…] that makes it considerably less satisfactory than the sound of Lehmann’s 1951 recording.”

To see the article with photos

 

 

Reviews from the 1930s

• Jerry Minkoff has sent some wonderful Lehmann reviews from the 1930s. 1935 01 02 – Bori in Boheme, Lehmann in Tannhäuser; 1935 01 05 – Rosenkavalier with Lehmann; 1935 02 24 – Sunday column – Rosenkavalier and the Marschallin; Lehmann’s portrayal; 1935 03 22 – Lotte Lehmann as Tosca; 1937 02 28 – Critics Disagree – Lehmann reviewed – 2019; 1937 02 28 – Critics Disagree cont. – Lehmann reviewed

Acoustics in Great Sound

• Ward Marston has made all of Lehmann’s Acoustics available in great sound! 

• You can now obtain technologically advanced sound for the acoustic recordings of Lotte Lehmann (plus some wonderful electrics) from Marston Records. Here’s what Ward Marston wrote:

Lotte Lehmann is today revered for her stellar portrayals of Sieglinde and the Marschallin with commercial recordings and Metropolitan Opera broadcasts giving testament to her in those roles. These highly regarded historic documents have been continuously available together with her no less admired performances of lieder. But most of the recordings now available of this great singer were made during the second half of her forty-year career, by which time she was no longer in her absolute vocal prime. Lehmann is sometimes now remembered as a consummate interpreter and musician, but one with a less than perfect vocal technique. Such judgments are incorrect: In her early recordings we can discover the ease and beauty of her vocal production, her voice fresh and youthful. Lehmann’s earliest records also give us a better idea of her extensive repertoire during the first half of her career. As noted in Dr. Jacobson’s essay, Lehmann sang a large range of roles during her years in Hamburg and Cologne. We are fortunate to get a glimpse of those portrayals through her acoustic recordings, made for Pathé, German Grammophon, and Odeon, between 1914 and 1926.

Lehmann’s first records were made for Pathé—just two sides recorded in 1914. In a hand-written letter from Lehmann to the Pathé administration in February 1915, she confirmed the extension of her contract until February 1916, also requesting payment of 400 Goldmarks. If Lehmann made any additional Pathé records, none were released. In fact, more than three years would pass before Lehmann would again make records. This lone Pathé disc is surely one of the most elusive of all records; in my forty years of collecting, I have never seen a copy offered for sale. We are grateful to Christian Zwarg for making a transfer of this great rarity available for this compilation.

With the outbreak of war in 1914 came a huge upheaval in the record industry in Germany. Relations between the German branch of the Gramophone Company Ltd. and the parent company in London ceased, but the German company continued to make records using the Gramophone Company name. During the first months of 1917, however, the company officially severed all connection to the Gramophone Company, reconstituting itself as the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. The new company began recording operations in September 1917 with Lotte Lehmann as one of their first artists. DGG also claimed the right to continue selling any Gramophone Company recordings made before the separation. In 1917, DGG began assigning new numbers to each disc, not only to their newly-produced discs, but also to any earlier Gramophone Company discs. This is why one finds Deutsche Grammophon pressings of records of artists such as Melba, Battistini, and Chaliapin with newly assigned numbers. To make matters more confusing, DGG continued using the old Gramophone Company catalog number system, printing these numbers on the record labels together with their new order numbers. Sometime in 1920, however, they stopped using the old catalog numbers, replacing them with new numbers that began with a letter prefix that denoted the city of location. Therefore, Lehmann’s later DGG discs all bear catalog numbers that begin with the letter B for Berlin. For this compilation, we have listed three numbers for each of Lehmann’s DGG recordings: first, the matrix number is given in parentheses; next is given the DGG order number followed by the company’s internal catalog number in brackets. The first three DGG sessions use the old Gramophone Company catalog numbers, while the fourth, fifth, and sixth sessions use the new DGG numbers.

Many of Lotte Lehmann’s DGG records were issued as single-faced discs, but by the early 1920s, all of her forty-six issued acoustic DGG records were coupled on double-faced discs with new order numbers. These later pressings are preferable because of their quieter background noise. For this compilation all transfers were made from such late pressings.

Lotte Lehmann’s acoustic Odeon discs were issued only in double-faced format, but pressings dating from the late 1920s sound far quieter than the earlier pressings from 1924–1926. We have made every effort to locate late pressings, but they are scarce and, in some cases, we had to use earlier, slightly noisier pressings. For the Odeon recordings especially, the choice of stylus was critical in bringing Lehmann’s voice into focus. In remastering all of the discs, obtrusive clicks, pops, and undesirable noises have been eliminated, and we have made an attempt to remove the harshness caused by horn resonance. The electric recordings chosen for the appendix are all available in beautiful, quiet copies with almost no restoration necessary. We hope that interest in this set will permit us to continue the Lotte Lehmann series with a second volume of her complete electric Odeon recordings.

Light Music

• As of 4 August 2017 you may now hear a new Lehmann CD called “Lotte Lehmann Sings Light Music” on the Jube label (JUBE1414). Here are the contents of this 81 minute remastered CD:

Arnold, E:	Da draußen in der Wachau
Benatzky:	Ich muss wieder einmal in Grinzing sein
Berlin, I:	God Bless America
Brahms:	Wiegenlied, Op. 49 No. 4 (Lullaby)
Cowler:	Es gibt eine Frau, die dich niemals vergisst
Engel-Berger:	Frühling ist es wieder
Ketèlbey:	The Sacred Hour Sanctuary of the Heart
Lehár:	Wär es auch nichts als ein Traum vom Glück (from Eva) Ich hol’ dir vom Himmel das Blau
Leopoldi:	Wien, sterbende Marchenstadt
May, H:	Der Duft, der eine schoene Frau begleitet
Meyer-Helmund:	Lieder (3), Op. 21: No. 2, Das Zauberlied
Molloy:	The Kerry Dance
Ralton:	Eine kleine Liebelei
Rosen, W:	Wenn du einmal dein Herz verschenkst
Schumann:	Kinderszenen, Op. 15: Träumerei
Siecynski:	Wien, du Stadt meiner Traüme
Stolz, R:	Im Prater bluh’n wieder die Baume, Op. 247
Strauss, J, II:	Mein Herr, was dächten (from Die Fledermaus) Klänge der Heimat (from Die Fledermaus) Herr Chevalier, ich grüße sie (from Die Fledermaus) Er ist Baron (from Der Zigeunerbaron) Ein Furstenkind, ein Wunder ist gescheh’n (from Der Zigeunerbaron) Kaiser-Walzer, Op. 437 sung as ‘Heut’ macht die Welt Sonntag fur mich’

80th Birthday Dinner

• Many thanks to Brian Hotchkin for sending the wonderful program that accompanied the elaborate celebration of Lehmann’s 80th birthday in 1968. Notice all the famous names associated with the event.

 

Review of Music & Arts Box

• Fanfare magazine reviewed the Lehmann Music & Arts box set:

LOTTE LEHMANN: A 125th Birthday Tribute • Lotte Lehmann (sop); various pianists; various conductors; various orchestras • MUSIC & ARTS 1279 (4 CDs + CD ROM: 295:05)  Producer Gary Hickling, a friend of Lehmann’s, the creator and maintainer of her discography, and a generous enthusiast of her art, approached Music & Arts to issue 19 previously unreleased recordings of the singer. This is the result. In all honesty, there’s nothing revelatory about the fresh material, here. The unissued live selections, in particular those recorded at a Los Angeles school auditorium in 1949 and parts of Town Hall recitals from 1943 and 1946, are a delight to hear, but not mandatory in the sense that they shed new light on her gifts, expertise, or repertoire. Indeed, two of the 19 are short speaking excerpts by Lehmann and Bruno Walter, while a third has Lehmann reading a poem of hers. But for the completist it provides yet further examples of the soprano’s intensity, radiant voice, and exceptional interpretative skill. And of course, by being extended to four very full discs, it not unintentionally furnishes an excellent entry point for the new listener curious about the singer.

The emphasis is not on opera, though we do get one selection a piece from Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Lohengrin, and Tosca. (Hickling’s web site is the place to go to sample much more opera, from a rapturous “Alles pflegt schon längst der Ruh’” [Der Freischütz] of 1929, to a delightfully flirtatiously “Mein Herr, was dächten Sie von mir” [Die Fledermaus] of 1931.) Instead, there’s a great deal of Wolf, Schubert, Brahms, and a fair amount of Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Given that there’s so much of Lehmann available, Hickling was able to focus on some of the very best: “Der Doppelgänger,” “Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’,” a remarkable “Der Wanderer,” and Mendelssohn’s “Schilflied” in a performance that demonstrates a careful expending of breath to create a seamless legato—not a usual feature of this passionately expressive artist. We also get some choice rarities, including a test pressing of Beethoven’s “Wonne der Wehmut” from 1941 that was never released on 78s, a “Vissi d’arte” in Italian from a 1938 radio broadcast, and an early 19th-century nationalistic song, Groos’s “Freihart die ich meine,” which the Thousand Year Reich revived in an entirely new context.

Both Music & Arts and Hickling deserve praise for their willingness to place texts and translations on a fifth disc as part of a PDF file. This saves on the cost of what would be a fat and rather awkwardly managed booklet, as well as allowing the producer the luxury of adding numerous Lehmann images and a plethora of personal observations. Curiously, the lengthy biography preserves a myth about Lehmann’s interaction with Goering started by the singer herself, and corrected in an essay on Hickling’s Lotte Lehmann League web site. The late author of the notes may not have been aware of the detective work that assembled an accurate picture of the events, but those errors of fact could have been reasonably edited out without affecting the considerable quality of the rest of the material.

It is not relevant to the wealth of musical content on this set, however, or indeed to anything in Lehmann’s art and her legacy of recordings, students, and her extremely insightful book, More Than Singing: The Interpretation of Songs. Both Hickling and Music & Arts deserve praise for this excellent set, in very good sound, that is clearly a labor of love. Enthusiastically recommended. Barry Brenesal

La Scala?

• You can’t believe everything you read. This appeared in the Neue Freie Presse of 20 January 1924. In English: Tomorrow (Monday) Lotte Lehmann‘s single concert [we’d call it a recital] at 7pm. At the piano: Professor Ferdinand Foll. Miss Lehmann appears as Lieder singer before the Vienna public for the first time in several years. Her program contains songs of Brahms, Schumann, Cornelius, Marx, and Strauss. In this concert, Miss Lehmann takes leave of the Vienna public for a longer period of time, because only a few days later she travels to Italy for several months, where she first appears as a guest singer for two months at La Scala, Milan. Remaining tickets…..The recital information is correct, but Lehmann didn’t sing on those dates at Italy’s La Scala. Rather, in this case, she traveled to Berlin, first to record on 13 February and then to sing opera there with Georg Szell, among other conductors at the Berlin Staatsoper, where she remained, making records and singing opera until 21 May 1924 the date she sang her first Marschallin in London under Bruno Walter’s direction. She continued singing opera (Ariadne auf Naxos, Der Rosenkavalier and Die Walküre), not returning to Vienna until the next season when on 9 September 1924 she sang in Faust. As usual, many thanks to Peter Clausen for the clipping. P.S. Lehmann did eventually sing a recital at La Scala, but in 1935.

Recital with Foll

• I had hardly written about the notice above before another email came from Herr Clausen with the missing information. Lehmann was indeed scheduled to sing in the “Great Concert Hall” and the pianist is none other than Professor Ferdinand Foll. He was a former friend of Hugo Wolf and knew what a recital should be. The composers included Brahms, Schumann, Cornelius, Marx, and Strauss.

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Review of Schumann Songs 1943

• The following review that speaks for itself has come to my attention. Take the time to read it through to understand the level of artistry that Lehmann had reached by 1943.

New York Times 25 January 1943
LEHMANN IS HEARD IN SCHUMANN SONGS
Soprano is assisted by Paul Ulanowsky in Program at Town Hall
By Olin Downes

A very distinguished recital of songs and song cycles by Robert Schumann was given by Lotte Lehmann yesterday afternoon in Town Hall. The capacity of the hall was brought out by an exceptionally attentive and appreciative audience days in advance of the event. There was no fuss about that either. The audience was practically all seated when the singer came in. The program began by Mme. Lehmann’s inviting the audience to sing the national anthem with her. Then she and her excellent accompanist, Paul Ulanowsky, began their task of communicants with the songs.

These were sung with a matchless simplicity, with an art that concealed an art now fully developed and shorn of every excrescence or superfluity of style, and the interpretation proceeded directly from the heart.

Mme. Lehmann sang these reveries and avowals with a fineness of style and a sense of proportion that had no slightest savor of exaggeration or less than utter sincerity, and her performance said plainly that if this was sentimental the audience could make the most of it. She believed what she sang. She herself was moved by it.

The “Dichterliebe” cycle permitted a wider range of expression and a greater variety of color. But the same simplicity, the same warm poetry and perfect proportion remained. Nor are the postludes of the piano to be forgotten. That is to say that there was complete unity of intention between the two performers, and that Mr. Ulanowsky with rare taste and sensibility completed the poetic thought of interpreter and composer.

One remembers those earlier years when Mme. Lehmann’s own nature swept her away and this resulted in prodigal and at time explosive outburst of tone, or disproportionate emphasis of phrase. All that is of the past. The thoughtful expenditure and shaping of tone, the maximum of communication with the minimum of effort, an intensity of emotion that requires no noisy heralding spoke more eloquently than any description could do.

Mood was established so completely that there was comparatively little demonstration till the end of the recital. For that matter the two cycles were sung without opportunity for applause between the songs that make them. But it is doubtful if in any case there would have been such a sign. There was the rapport between the artist and her listeners made possible by her achievement and also by the proportions of the hall. At the end the audience was loath to leave. Mme. Lehmann wisely refrained from an encore. To the best of her ability she had done a complete thing, and what she had done will long be cherished by those who heard her.

• Lehmann shared the stage with many famous singers (Melchior, Slezak, Piccaver etc.) and instrumentalists such as Heifetz, Arrau, Rubinstein, Szigeti etc., but until now, I hadn’t seen Horowitz listed in a joint recital. This “Aeolus” program of 12 May 1932 shows a very prestigious house concert! Here’s the contents of the program: Lehmann began with Brahms: Von ewiger Liebe; An die Nachtigal; Sandmännchen; Botschaft; Vergebliches Ständchen; Schumann: Der Nussbaum; Alte Laute; Ich grolle nicht; Widmung. Usually she’d sing an encore or two as well. And after intermission Horowitz continued with 32 Variations, Beethoven; Adagio (from Toccata in C Major), Bach/Busoni; Rondo in Eb Major, Hummel; Capriccio in E Major, Scarlatti; Four Walzes Op. 39, Brahms; Two Mazurkas in C# minor, Chopin; Etude in F Major, Chopin; “Petrushka” Semain grasse, Dance Russe, Stravinsky. Not a shabby concert!

No More Third Reich Concerts

• From the Pariser Tagezeitung of 8 April 1938, Peter Petersen has sent the following article, which I translate: LOTTE LEHMANN SINGS NO MORE IN THE THIRD REICH; Lotte Lehmann, the great singer famous even at the Casino Theater in Desuville, who yesterday returned to America, stated the following to a French journalist: “No, I haven’t been driven from Germany. I am Arien and so is my husband.”

“Why are you leaving your homeland, you who just last year, was celebrated as no other artist, in Fidelio under the direction of Bruno Walter and Toscanini; you who give the artistic fame to the Vienna Opera and who experiences such triumphs from your too seldom Paris appearances?”

“Why? Because I don’t feel free in my homeland, because I can’t live freely and have the right to choose songs by Mendelssohn, Hugo Wolf or [Joseph] Marx. This is why I have left my homeland, but I have left freely…Certainly, nothing in the world is more important than freedom. Thus, I will seek American citizenship.”

nn’s second Australia/New Zealand tour.

Operation 1923

• Peter Clausen, sent this 7 December 1923 Lehmann clipping from Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse, which I’ll try to translate: Yesterday the State Opera singer Lotte Lehmann needed to undergo a small operation for a neglected infected spot on the mouth proven necessary by Professor Dr. Lotheisen, assistant to Dr. Zifferer. The artist suffered violent pain already on the day of Piccaver’s Farewell Concert, but postponed the operation to avoid canceling. Miss Lehmann will withdraw from artistic activity for about two weeks. [I wonder if this is the cause for the endearing drooping lip that Lehmann displayed so much of her life?]

Lehmann.

Records Banned

• This article of 17 October 1938 was news to me: Lotte Lehmann’s Records Banned in Austria: The Austrian authorities have announced a ban on records by Lotte Lehmann, Metropolitan Opera soprano. (She recently took out her first citizenship papers in the United States.)…

Sieben Lehmannlieder

• “Sieben Lehmannlieder” by Thomas Passatieri were commissioned for the Lehmann centennial in 1988. Both the premiere performance and the booklet which accompanied it can now be heard/viewed on another page. Lehmann’s student Judith Beckmann sings and the composer accompanies.

Review of Music & Arts Box

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MUSIC & ARTS BOX

• The 4 CD set of rare Lotte Lehmann recordings (with a 5th CD ROM containing notes, texts, and translations) is available for purchase at Music & Arts. It represents almost three years of research, editing and finally producing. (Full disclosure: I am the producer). Some background: In July 2013 I finished working with Lani Spahr, who was the restoration engineer for this Music & Arts Lehmann CD set that features her live performances and other rarities. It was amazing to listen to the improvements he was able to make on some of the noisy radio broadcasts of the 1930s and 40s. And of course, Lehmann never fails! I do believe that the audience brought out even more intensity in her interpretations. That implies that some of these tracks contain material that Lehmann recorded in the studio, which is true. But there is also a huge amount of music that she did not record. And a total of 21 items never heard before in any format! In November 2013 I had the pleasure of working with the graphic designer, Mark Hamilton Evans. The set is called Lotte Lehmann: A 125th Birthday Tribute. Besides the four CDs of Lehmann’s singing, there’s a fifth CD that holds the liner notes, which includes the article “The Life and Art of Lotte Lehmann” by the late Beaumont Glass. There are also many photos, my short article, as well as the texts and translations, all total: 111 pages!

LOHENGRIN 1935

• There’s a sort of “second” take on the 1935 Lohengrin with Lehmann, Melchior, Lawrence, Schorr, List, et al, from Immortal Performances. Better sources and, of course the meticulous restoration work of Richard Caniell, make this recording one to really enjoy. Some of the problems associated with such private recordings still persist, but there is MUCH to appreciate.  This release is, as the company states, “superior sound to all previously released CD albums by various labels, though it still is afflicted with the compressed 1935 transmission characteristics. Our restoration is taken from the original transcription, with broadcast commentary and curtain calls, and offers a booklet containing extensive articles about the performance, singers and composer, together with rare photos.” Lehmann never disappoints. She sounds young and innocent (she was 47 years old at the time!) in her two major arias that occur in the first act. And Melchior can sing sweetly as well as fervently. The surprise for me was the strong acting/singing of Marjorie Lawrence as Ortrud. All the high expectations you may have for Friedrich Schorr as Friedrich and Emanuel List as King Henry are happily satisfied. And there is a lot of good playing from the Metropolitan Opera orchestra under Artur Bodanzky’s direction. There are two bonuses on the third CD: first the excerpt from the 1939 live performance of Lehmann and Melchior in the first act of Die Walküre (from Winterstürme through Du bist der Lenz and Wehwalt heist du für wahr) in amazingly clear sound. And the set concludes with the Robert Schumann duets that Melchior and Lehmann recorded in 1939 (with orchestral accompaniments). These recordings (as well as the whole set of three CDs) are worth hearing again, in this new improved sound, even if you already know them. The company has discovered new sources and now provides (at no cost) replacement CDs for the second and third ones.

Recital Program 1935

• Here’s a complete 1935 Lehmann recital program.

Knapp Castle

• When Lehmann first came West to live with Frances Holden, they moved into the “Knapp Castle,” which soon burned. Here’s a blog with photos of the burned remains as it looks today.

Versa in Prosa

• For those of you interested in reading Lehmann’s earliest book of poetry, I’ve begun to upload that. It’s called Versa in Prosa.

Bad Reviews

• In the various Lehmann biographies one can read glowing reviews of Lehmann’s performances. I’ve finally found one full of negative comments and a second one with mixed thoughts. These are English critics. The first,  acknowledges Lehmann’s success at Covent Garden and the enthusiasm of the Queen’s Hall audience (probably of 25 Feb 1930), as well as the “insinuating beauty of her voice–perhaps the loveliest one has ever known” and “her quick and warm response to poetic suggestion.” Then he begins with his problems: “There was a streak of the maudlin in her programme that proved rather too much for a modern English audience. We accept nothing more gladly than German songs from Mme. Lehmann, for we know the sort of thing she excels in, but her scheme to-night would have been better for a little more spice. One or two Schubert songs, Brahms in one of his irascible moods, or some of the acid of Hugo Wolf would have made all the difference, and none of these masters was represented at all. Beethoven sounded a little meagre, though the two “Egmont” songs were an interesting revival, and Schumann was shown in his wan and tearful manner, except in the enthusiastic “Frühlingsnacht,” which surged magnificently to the singer’s most jubilant tones. It was this song one wanted to hear a second time, not the once incredibly overrated “Ich grolle nicht,” which nowadays seems not so much a song as a smear. For the Liszt songs there were two excuses–that they really represented the composer adequately, if unflatteringly, and that much of their cloying perfumery was made tolerable by the persuasive beauty of the singing.” Of the same performance another critic wrote, “Last night she really convinced a large audience that she is a brilliant exception to the general rule that opera singers are not at their best away from the stage. She does not sing Lieder as if they were dramatic scenes, but with her perfect feeling for curve and phrase she sings those German sentimental love songs that are so dear to the heart of the Teutonic maiden with a rare lyric eloquence. Her generous programme last night composed songs by Giordani, Monteverdi, Gluck, Beethoven, Liszt, Marx, and R. Strauss. Naturally certain songs in her list were more closely suited to her ability than others, but to them all she brought a clarity and precision of technique, an earnest approach, and a sensitive understanding which were matched only by the charm and spirit of her delivery.” He goes on to list the songs he likes and then: “…she was not quite so successful with the Beethoven group and she certainly should not sing  ‘Freudvoll und Leidvoll’, [which the above critic praised!] which she screams at the top notes.”

Berlin Column

• In April 2013 I received an email from Ulrich Peter: “I was in Berlin last week, on business, but I had a day off and so I discovered the city by bicycle. What a breathtaking city, a real Weltstadt, sprudelndes Leben everywhere. When I came to the center, at the Berlin Dom and famous Lustgarten, right next to the Brandenburg Gate, Lotte Lehmann jumped into my eye. It is an open air exhibition called ‘Zerstörte Vielfalt,’ the ‘Litfass-Säulen’ show many courageous people who turned against the Nazis in the years between 1933 to 1938 and 1945. The Lehmann  text says: 1933, Opernstar Lotte Lehmann kehrt dem NS-Staat den Rücken/Opera star Lotte Lehmann turned her back on the Nazi state.”

Rosenkavalier 1939 Improved

• One of the other Lehmann-related sources has been Richard Caniell of Canada’s Immortal Performances. First, he completely re-worked the 1939 broadcast from the Met, of Rosenkavalier. This was an important performance because it includes a lot of material missing from the HMV recording of 1933. The Met performance has a good cast, including the young Risë Stevens, as Octavian. To me, the orchestra portions still sound boxy, but when Lehmann sings, it’s quite natural with plenty of detail. Lehmann’s diction is apparent, as is her complete command of the role. It’s worth the price just to hear the Marschallin sections. By the way, there are extensive “liner” notes with unusual photos, as well as two interviews (in English) with Lehmann and non-Lehmann Act III recordings from 1928. I was in email touch with Richard Caniell and in a P.S., Richard writes: “Immortal Performances was also the source for the Naxos release in 1998 when that company formed its Historical label around our work. Their issue of it was disastrously denigrated in its sound and this was one, of many such occurances, that led us to resign from the project. Anyone who has the Naxos set deserves apologies. I am glad, at last, to be finally associated with something listenable of this broadcast.”