Mme Lehmann never met Judith Sutcliffe. She was friends with Frances Holden, but did so much to investigate Lehmann’s life, help publish Glass’ Lehmann bio, worked on the LLL Newletters, and reported on her Vienna visit for the Lehmann Centennial, that she certainly deserves a place among the people in Lehmann’s life, even if after her life!
• Judy Sutcliffe died 3 March 2021. Judy was born in 1941. She had suffered a return of cancer. Judy was a stalwart supporter of the efforts to preserve Lotte Lehmann’s legacy.
Here’s the one sentence obituary I contributed to her Santa Barbara one: Beginning with her participation on the board of the UCSB Lotte Lehmann Centennial Festival, Judy was a consistent advocate for Lehmann’s legacy, whether in editing the Beaumont Glass biography of the soprano, writing newsletters for the Lotte Lehmann League which she founded, traveling to Europe to uncover historic Lehmann documents, or providing her lifetime accumulation of such material to relevant institutions.
Judy and I first met during 1987 as so much of the world was preparing for the Lotte Lehmann centennial of 1988. Beaumont Glass and his wife had moved into Lehmann’s Santa Barbara home and with Frances Holden, her companion, he was writing the authorized Lehmann biography. We were invited to meet at Orplid, Lehmann’s home, to work together on the centennial. The dedicated members included Holden; Glass, who’d worked with LL at the Music Academy of the West; Joe Boissé, University Librarian; Dan Jacobson, Teaching Associate at UCSB, and at that meeting as Coordinator of the Centennial Festival; Christian Brun, head of UCSB’s Special Collections which housed the Lotte Lehmann Archive; as well as Judy, who was editing Glass’ LL bio; and me, beginning to write the LL discography that would end up in the bio.
Judy secured Capra Press in Santa Barbara to publish the Lehmann biography. Glass had access to LL’s letters as well as her archive’s memorabilia. The book was to contain many photos, and of course, my discography. Roger Levenson joined Judy in the editing of the bio. –GH
Here’s what Judy wrote in the lead article of the first Lotte Lehmann League newsletter:
As we enter the second Lehmann century…
Let’s build on the momentum generated worldwide in 1988 to reach more young singers and listeners, your friends and your students, with the art, the teaching and the life of Lotte Lehmann.
Some say you had to see her on stage to know the real artist, that recordings alone are a shadow of her vital presence. That may be true for those lucky enough to have experienced her magic. But many of us–including we who create this Lehmann journal–were born too late for that privilege.
It is through recordings, books and the vivid memories of those who saw her on stage that we know her. For us, that is an enormous quantity of inspired musical art to absorb over a lifetime. She made nearly 500 commercial recordings and there are hundreds of tapes of her master classes and radio interviews.
If anyone thinks the magic died when she did in 1976– here’s an example of the power she still possesses today, electronically expressed. Gary Hickling, Lehmann’s discographer, double-bass player/teacher and art song disk jockey in Hawaii, tells of a truck driver friend of his who had heard him talking off and on the past year or two about “this Lehmann person”. He finally asked Hickling if he could hear what her voice sounded like. Hickling gave him a tape of his Hawaii Public Radio Lehmann Centennial Program aired in February 1988. The man called back later to say that he had listened to the tape in tears, her voice “just got to me.”
Lehmann’s art communicates. It did during her lifetime; it still does. We want more people in this world to hear her voice, to be touched by her art and to learn from her example.
Gary Hickling and I are starting this Lehmann League Newsletter because we feel that in her recorded and written art, Lehmann is still alive and has much to say to us all. Right now, it’s just the two of us, with one computer in Santa Barbara, the other in Kailua, and a mailing list of people who have indicated either a mad passion or at least a passing interest in Lotte Lehmann.
We’re not attempting to be a nonprofit corporation, at least not yet, because of the fuss-and-bother bookwork. And we’re not asking for subscriptions (yet!) because the list is relatively small and we plan to produce this little journal inexpensively and just pay for it ourselves as an offering on the altar of art.
We are independent of the Lehmann Archives at the University of California in Santa Barbara, but we work closely with them, and you will read some news on Archive developments in this issue. We hope you will share with our readers your views, your memories, your research, your Lehmann letters. Keep in touch through the Lehmann League with other Lehmanniacs. Send us addresses of interested people. Write to us. We’d like to hear from you.
–Judy Sutcliffe
From that same first newsletter Spring 1989:
Looking for Lehmann
Judy Sutcliffe and Gary Hickling will be traveling in Germany and Austria May 15-31, looking for material for the Lehmann Archives.
“It is an exciting prospect to try to find in Europe Lehmann-related items to enhance the already prestigious collection at UCSB,” says Gary Hickling, Lehmann discographer. “There may be radio, master class and interview material which the Archives does not have. We will also be seeking copies of the many Lehmann Centennial tributes aired on German and Austrian radio and TV last year.
“We also want to have a look at recording archives and radio vaults in the slim chance that there might be original metal masters that were never released, as well as acetates, wire or tape recordings and rare 78 rpms.
“We’ll also be looking for non-aural Lehmann items.” says Hickling. “Photos and negatives, letters, programs, reviews and other articles will all be useful in preserving the Lehmann legacy.”
Lotte Lehmann League Newsletter Summer 1989 Volume 1, number 2
From the phone booths of Vienna to the marble stairs of Munich
by Judy Sutcliffe
A critical period of our May 15-31 Lehmann trip to Europe was spent in stuffy phone booths in Munich, Frankfurt and Vienna. These are special booths one finds at post offices, from which one can make numerous calls, paying for them all at the end. Gary Hickling tied those phone lines in knots, making connections with people he had formerly only written to, chasing down one tip after another, finding the sought-for person “on vacation”, checking home phone numbers or talking with other people in the same department, on and on, one referral leading to another, all of this almost impossible to have done from the US.
We went to see as many people as we could, so when we were not in phone booths we were running to catch street cars or trains or we were running up stairs. The stairs were always marble and the person we were scheduled to see always seemed to have an office three stories up. Gary galloped the stairs two steps at a time, and I jogged after him, feeling like a short-legged dachshund only able to take one step at a time.
Our first day in Vienna we went up and down the stairs to the third-floor Austrian Radio Archive at least seven times, always at a dead run. (Yes, there are elevators, but why wait when you can run?) In between, through streetcar windows we caught glimpses of cascading lilacs and chestnut “candles” in Munich, enjoyed the Vienna inner city full of people spooning Italian ices while lounging about in the pedestrian malls, and we smiled at the green expanse of hills and forests we saw from train windows as we journeyed from city to city.
Everyone we met was extremely helpful very interested in the UCSB Lehmann Archives, and more than willing to give us their cooperation and suggestions.
Gary and I are both 48 and many of the older people we talked with expressed pleasure that a younger generation who had never heard Lehmann on stage could be crazy about their beloved Lehmann. We, too, were pleased to find along the way a number of Lehmann enthusiasts who are younger than we are. Our intentions, of course, are to assist in bringing the voice of Lehmann to the ears and hearts of generations yet unborn. Tapes, records, writers, TV, radio and record producers and announcers, vocal music teachers and the supporting archives are the means to do this. Interconnections need to be woven, so that enthusiasm can be shared with more people.
What did we come back with in our carry-on luggage? Little note-books full of scrawled names, addresses, phone numbers, two large open reels of German language interviews of Lehmann, a cassette containing short interviews from the Austrian Radio Archive, several rare 78rpm records, a charming autographed note, an interview on tape with Horst Wahl (Lehmann’s recording technician from 1925–35), a phone interview with Martha Mödl about Lehmann, and copies of two of the four new Lehmann CDs we found in record scores.
And not in our baggage but forthcoming: 150 photos of Lehmann from Salzburg and Vienna archives; more taped interviews and off-the-air performances; archival materials from the Theater Collection of the University of Hamburg and from the Hamburg Opera Archives; tapes from the German Radio Archives; a second filmed interview by Werner Baecker; The Leo Slezak Centennial Celebration tape with Lehmann; a missing BBC interview; better copies of rare live performances; invitations to join ISIA and Friends of the Vienna State Opera; Lehmann data from Korngold expert Berndt Rachold and from the Richard Strauss Institute in Munich; private films of Lehmann; two filmed interviews, TV memorials and celebrations from Austrian Television and suggestions about two out-of-print books about the Vienna of Lehmann’s time by Otto Strasset and Hugo Burghauser. We ordered a recent book on the history of the Salzburg Festival and bought another detailing the history of the Hamburg Opera. Both books include generous sections on Lehmann. Great numbers of photos, critical comment, theater announcements, programs and letters await further research in Vienna and Hamburg.
Among the people whom we met and talked with (and whom we deeply thank) include: VIENNA: Marcel Prawy of the Vienna Opera, who has produced many TV and radio programs and articles relating to Lehmann; Robert Werba, Austrian Radio producer, author and Lehmann record collector; Gottfried Cervenka, record collector, producer and distributor who ordered Lehmann Centennial Albums for his Da Caruso record shop across from the Opera; Erwin Heidrich, retired bookstore owner, a Lehmann enthusiast who has donated several rare items to the Lehmann Archives; Hertha Schuch, collector and friend of Lehmann since the ’30’s who provided many important names for our research; Dr. Robert Kittler, head of Photo Archive of the Theater Collection of the National Library; Dr. Rainer Hubert, director of the Austrian Phonotek; Herr Neuwirt, most helpful at Austrian Radio. FREIBURG: Horst Wahl, recording technician at Odeon in the early days. MUNICH: Frank Manhold, classical radio announcer/producer at Bavarian Radio; Dr. Hejak, Archivist of the Bavarian State Opeta; Jürgen Grundheber, sound archivist, record producer/distributor; Andreas Dürrwanger, young lawyer/researcher; Walter Schwarz, Munich Philharmonic percussionist/researcher; Kevork Matouchian, sound archivist/dealer. FRANKFURT: Mechthilde Brüning and Anke Bingman at German Radio Archives. BY TELEPHONE: Berndt Wessling, author of Mehr als eine Sängerin; who has many letters and interviews of Lehmann which he is sending; Hans Landgraf of EMI Records who is sending a tape of the out-of-print LP of Lehmann which he produced; Otto Preiser of Preiser Records, who provided the name of an American distributor of his Lebendige Vergangenheit series; Jürgen Schmidt of Preiser Records, who gave us much valuable information; Fr. Cordes, Archivist of the Hamburg Opera, who is sending printed matter on Lehmann; Peter Aistleitner, record collector, Toscanini expert and researcher, who told us of relevant Lehmann people; Gunther Walter, editor of the magazine Stimmen die um die Welt gingen, who is sending Lehmann material such as copies of letters and contracts, and Christopher Norton-Welsh, record collector and vocal expert living in Vienna, who has promised us help in our on-going Vienna projects.
Did we miss anything? Yes, we missed a rendezvous with music critic Alfred Frankenstein, who arrived in Vienna two days after we left, which we much regret. He had written two delightful letters to us after receiving the first LLL newsletter, and we had hoped to meet. But you will hear more about him later. We were not able to interview as many artists as we wished, but some have expressed interest to do this on their own and send us the tapes. We plan to contact: Otto Edelmann, Eric Werba, Hans Weigel, Sena Jurinac, Hermann Prey, Jörg Demus, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Elisabeth Söderström, Regine Crespin, Christa Ludwig, Birgit Nilsson, Judy Beckman, Dalton Baldwin, Erna Berger, Joseph Witt. We tried without success to contact André Tubeuf in Strasbourg, France. He wrote to us just prior to our trip and was most anxious to provide information or material from his vast collection of Lehmann recordings and letters.
As we finished our work in Vienna towards the end of our trip, Michael Schuch took us to lunch at Kahlenburg, overlooking the city, and then dropped me off at the railroad depot café with all our baggage and a large plate of cakes to wait for the train to Munich which would leave in two hours. Michael meanwhile went home and Gary took off to Da Caruso near the Opera to pick up an amazing list of Lehmann live recordings. From there he ran to Austrian Radio for a second meeting with Robert Werba, trying to get everything discussed in 10 minutes, then he grabbed a taxi back to the station. Michael Schuch meanwhile had come back to the train station to check on me and the diminished plate of cakes. It was 15 minutes to departure time. I told Michael not to worry, Gary would arrive at the last minute. So he waved goodby.
When Gary loped in a few minutes later he said he’d been running up the stairs to the café when he heard clapping. He looked up and there stood Michael Schuch applauding the long distance runner.
Lotte Lehmann League Newsletter Fall 1989 Volume 1, number 3
Lehmann Centennial in Vienna
by Judy Sutcliffe
In the summer of 1987 I heard that there was to be a special performance of Der Rosenkavalier at the Vienna Opera on Lotte Lehmann’s 100th birthday, February 27, 1988, followed by a lecture the next day by Marcel Prawy, of the Opera. I decided to go. Eric Hvolbøll, a young Santa Barbara lawyer, volunteered to accompany me. His mother, Elizabeth Hvolbøll, is a local singer who studied at the Music Academy during Lehmann times.
In Vienna we contacted Hertha Schuch, one of Lehmann’s friends and admirers from the Golden Days before the war. The three of us sat in box seats for the Rosenkavalier performance, Eric and I much awed at the whole spectacle. During intermission we admired and photographed the extensive display of Lehmann photographs, programs, paintings and memorabilia that Marcel Prawy had assembled for this Lehmann weekend.
The opera was opulently performed. Hertha remarked afterward, however, with a sigh, “Lotte wasn’t there.” Those whose memories hold her indelible image are rarely satisfied with today’s substitutes.
But Lotte was there the next day, and I was mightily surprised and overwhelmed. There was to be a lecture by Prawy. Somehow, I expected a small academic room somewhere in the opera building, and a lot of elderly people and some empty seats, it having been 50 years since Lehmann was on that stage. (I had walked into a classical record shop in Santa Barbara one day, asked the clerk if he had the new EMI CD of Lotte Lehmann, and he said, “Who? Oh, I always wondered who that concert hall was named for.”) With that small expectation, I walked into the Vienna Opera itself, to box seats arranged by Hertha, and we looked out and up at a full house, thronged with people, 2,000 or more, all ages. There was a lively bustling of voices across the hall, I thought I spotted Grace Bumbry in one of the box seats.
Marcel Prawy came on stage at 2 p.m. and lectured–talked extemporaneously, I should say, with humor and vivacity–about Lehmann for two and a half hours. His comments were interspersed with tape recordings of Lehmann’s voice. I don’t know much about sound systems and hall acoustics, but I was thoroughly shaken by the resonance of her voice as it soared, clear and vibrant, filling that opera house with its magnificence. Tears, welled up in my eyes, and I could hear sniffles in the handkerchiefs across the house every time her voice rang out.
During his lecture, Prawy invited several colleagues to talk. He asked Egon Seefehlner, a past director of the Vienna Opera, to describe the indescribable, Lehmann’s voice. Seefehlner said simply that it was the only one that could make him weep.
We who are left with the legacy of her records, tend to listen to them in small living rooms, being careful not to disturb the neighbors with too much volume. There was a dimensional difference to hearing her recorded voice in the Vienna Opera, and I can only wonder at what the added dimension of her living fibre did to those who were born early enough, on the right side of the Atlantic, to hear. But I understood why all those people were there, weeping.
Seefehlner, if my understanding of German was anywhere accurate, said that he had first heard Lehmann sing when he was fourteen, and then many times after until the war. He met her again during the 1955 reopening of the Vienna Opera, the first time she returned after 1937.
He then said that his next meeting with Lehmann was in 1976 when he sat in his office at the Opera, staring in disbelief at a small bronze box on his desk labeled Lotte Lehmann. “All that was left of that glorious voice and presence was a mere handful of sand,” he said. The urn of ashes had been sent from Santa Barbara for a memorial service on the marble steps of the Opera entryway, the old section which had survived the war. Her remains were buried in a place of honor in the Vienna cemetery.
As a special tribute to Lehmann, Grace Bumbry, her most famous student, came down to the stage to talk with Prawy about Lehmann’s influence as a teacher of lieder and opera interpretation. Miss Bumbry sang “Auf dem Kirchhofe”, by Brahms, twice to demonstrate the dramatic and emotional difference in presentation that she had learned from Lehmann.
After the lecture, we walked through the snow back to Hertha Schuch’s apartment, and, as if we had not had quite enough, we watched with her a half hour TV presentation on Lehmann by Marcel Prawy. This, by the way, capped a week that contained four radio programs on Lehmann as well.
The love, honor and respect I saw showered upon the memory of Lehmann in Vienna last year made me smile at this comment in a letter we received from Dr. Herman Schornstein: “On one of my jaunts to Bad Gastein with Lehmann in the late 60’s, we journeyed by car across Austria to spend part of the time in Schruns. We stopped, without any prior planning, in Innsbruck for lunch. Within minutes some Austrian youth came up with a postcard of LL to sign! So I imagine they did something special for her 100th”
We’ve discovered a long article Judy Sutcliffe wrote on Holden, Glass, and the impression that Lehmann‘s singing made on her (Judy). Sutcliffe on Holden et al.