Lotte Lehmann
Lotte Lehmann, whose full name was Charlotte Sophie Pauline Lehmann, was a German and American opera singer and soprano. Born in Perleberg on February 27, 1888, she grew up in a civil servant’s family. The family moved to Berlin in 1902, and she studied singing with several teachers, most successfully with Mathilde Mallinger.
Lehmann began her professional career in 1910 with the Hamburg City Theatre, where she first sang small roles. Her performance as Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin brought her wider recognition. She made her first recordings in 1914. Enrico Caruso heard her sing Eurydice in Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice and praised her talent.
In 1916 Lehmann joined the Vienna State Opera, where she remained a leading performer until 1937. She created the Composer in the 1916 Vienna premiere of the revised version of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne on Naxos, the Dyer’s Wife in the 1919 Vienna premiere of The Woman without a Shadow, and Christine in the 1924 Dresden premiere of Intermezzo. She sang Arabella in the opera’s 1933 Vienna premiere, but her signature role was the Marschallin in The Knight of the Rose. Her Wagner roles included Elsa, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, Eva in The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, and especially Sieglinde in The Valkyrie. She also performed extensively in Italian opera, including nearly all of Puccini’s operas and Turandot.
Lehmann sang in Toscanini’s first radio concert in 1934 and appeared at the Salzburg Festival, where she performed Leonore in Beethoven’s Fidelio under Toscanini in 1935. After making her Metropolitan Opera debut as Sieglinde in 1934, she moved to the United States in 1937. Her concerts, often accompanied by Bruno Walter, helped introduce American audiences to German art song. She left the opera stage in 1945 as the Marschallin and gave her farewell concert in New York on February 16, 1951.
Lehmann taught at the Music Academy in Santa Barbara and worked as an opera director, staging The Knight of the Rose at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1962–63 season. She wrote autobiographical and instructional books, as well as poetry and prose, and was also a visual artist. Her honors included the City of Vienna’s honorary ring, the Los Angeles Times Women of the Year Silver Cup, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the Austrian honorary title of chamber singer. She died in Santa Barbara on August 26, 1976, and was buried at Vienna Central Cemetery.