Lehmann Dead

A shadow fell over Bayreuth last week. From Berlin came news that she who had learned the music-drama gospel from the lips of the master, she who had created Isolde in America, she who had been called the greatest of Wagnerian singers, was gone. Lilli Lehmann was dead.

Last November official Austria celebrated her 80th birthday. White hair piled high like a coronet, figure carried as proudly as it once held Brunnhilde's shield, Lilli Lehmann heard President Michael Hainisch confer on her the title of "Professor," listened as he rehearsed her glorious performances at the Vienna Opera in the days of the Empire, her efforts in behalf of the Mozart Festivals in Salzburg.

Born in Wuerzburg, Bavaria, Lilli Lehmann started her career as a coloratura soprana. Bellini and Donizetti were her gods. Then she met a little man with burning eyes. He was her mother's former lover and he told her she must study his music. And so she abandoned her Traviata, her Mignon, her Carmen, and became instead an Elsa, a Bruennhilde, an Isolde. Soon she became world renowned as the great Wagner interpreter. In 1885 she went to the U. S., to the Metropolitan. City after city paid her tribute. Grover Cleveland and Andrew Carnegie were among her admirers. Still specializing in Wagner, she proved that she could excel in other music. Few singers today have a repertoire of more than 30 roles. Lilli Lehmann knew 168.

Today she is mourned throughout the musical world. Most distracted are her pupils, young girls to whom she gave the last years of her life. They adored her, studied day and night, waiting for her to tell them they were ready for their debuts, remembering what she had done once many years before for a favorite pupil, Geraldine Farrar.