Prima Donna from Perleberg

(See front cover)

Bright in the pattern of New York's history have been the dozens of prima donnas who made news with every utterance, set fashions in food and dress, left vivid memories with every song they sang. Old men still live who remember pious Jenny Lind when she trilled in gaslit Castle Garden, a protegee of that amazing Yankee, Phineas T. Barnum. Adelina Patti was singing at the old Academy of Music on 14th Street when broughams first brought Vanderbilts and Astors to the shiny new doors of the Metropolitan Opera House.

If a prima donna roll-call were taken this week there would be no answers from the great singers of 50 years ago. The last to die, at a rich old age, was plump little Marcella Sembrich (TIME, Jan. 21). Of the living singers no longer singing there remains mountainous Luisa Tetrazzini who in Italy squabbles publicly over money with her 34-year-old husband. In France there is old Emma Calve, proud with the assurance that her Carmen has never been surpassed. In a walk-up studio in Bronxville (N. Y.), great Olive Fremstad lives grimly surrounded by her operatic trophies. The still lovely Emma Eames divides her time between Paris and Manhattan, occasionally revisits her old home in Bath, Me. Alma Gluck stopped opera-singing in 1912. Concerts and phonograph record royalties made her rich. And she is content to be a New York hostess and devoted wife to Violinist Efrem Zimbalist.

To the brilliant pre-War era belonged Ernestine Schumann-Heink, hardy at 73, broadcasting in Chicago last week for Hoover Vacuum Cleaners and sending flowers to the bewildered Mother Dionne from "Mother Schumann-Heink." Geraldine Farrar, long the high-spirited pet of the Met, has also turned to radio. Sedately she describes the doings on the stage where once she ruled. Mary Garden was resting in Manhattan last week after her Debussy lecture-recitals and a visit to Sing Sing.

Lacking much of the oldtime glamour, the most notable female singers now current on the world's stages are:

Lucrezia Bori, young and unmarried at 46, lately adored as "Savior of the Met," gracefully expert in light florid roles.

Amelita Galli-Curci, 45, who still sings profitably in South Africa and India where she has no youthful coloratura rivals.

Maria Jeritza who impressed Chicago audiences this winter but who is no longer wanted by the Metropolitan.

Rosa Ponselle and Elisabeth Rethberg who sing most of the routine Italian roles at the Metropolitan today. Both are capable.

Lily Pons, 30, who made her stir four winters ago and already sounds tired. But she lately signed a fat three-year cinema contract with RKO.

Kirsten Flagstad, 38, a new import from Norway, whose first Isolde won reams of praise last week. Critic Lawrence Gilman of the Herald Tribune called her performance "one of the rarest of our time." Even Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt stood in her box and cheered.

Gertrude Kappel who, older and more experienced than Flagstad, has been the Metropolitan's most dependable Wagnerian since 1928.

Frida Leider, whose absence from the U. S. this winter gave Flagstad her job. Leider figured that with the devalued dollar and the short Metropolitan season she could make more money by remaining in Europe.

The singer who has thus far contributed most to the 1934-35 season is a simple, hearty German whose name is Lotte Lehmann.* Lotte Lehmann began her busy season with the San Francisco Opera, later sang in opera in Philadelphia, in Chicago. One of her 24 recitals was in Manhattan last week, when pure German Lieder brought an uproar of applause. Lotte Lehmann's next stop was Detroit where she sang over the radio on the Ford Symphony Hour. She hurried then to Boston to sing in the famed old mansion which belonged to Mrs. Jack Gardner who had Nellie Melba for her guest there 30 years ago. Back in Manhattan she was then to sing in Lohengrin, her first Metropolitan Elsa. Next week to benefit Mrs. William Randolph Hearst's Free Milk Fund for Babies she will enact the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, a great and subtle role of which Lotte Lehmann has proved herself the greatest interpreter.

Patti surrounded herself with cockatoos and basked in vanity. The careers of Garden, Farrar and Jeritza have been bright with jewels, racy with escapades. But Lotte Lehmann is just a singer. Her childhood in Perleberg, Germany, was plain. She remembers red plush furniture, a feeble-minded grandfather in an embroidered velvet cap, an understanding mother who on Christmas day played Santa Claus. Her father, a small-town official, was determined that his daughter should be a school-teacher because schoolteachers get pensions. Lotte Lehmann is already assured of a pension--from the proud Vienna Opera of which she is a Member of Honor.

The way to Vienna was hard. Her first real singing teacher dismissed her because she had "no voice" and she struggled for scholarships thereafter, wrote poetry on the side. The first money she earned came from verses submitted to Berlin's Der Tag. In 1910 she made her operatic debut in Hamburg and there she learned routine. One night an Austrian impresario was in the theatre on a hunt for a tenor. He signed up Lotte Lehmann instead.

In Vienna Lehmann found fame and a stalwart husband, Herr Otto Krause, who travels with her to the U. S., packs her bags and hopes to sell a penny can-opener of his own invention. Lehmann's ways are unpretentious. She keeps no maid, answers her own telephone, does her own mending. Five years ago she was definitely large. Now 20 Ib. thinner, she watches her diet, never orders dessert although she nibbles a bit at the apple pie which Herr Krause invariably chooses.

But all prima donnas have superstitions and Lotte Lehmann is no exception. In her dressing-room she keeps photographs of "mein Vater, meine Mutter, mein Mann und mein Bruder Fritz." She kisses them all and takes a nip of sherry before she goes on stage. For the rest her entourage consists of three stuffed animals: a brown plush dog, a fluffy white cat which holds a lorgnette, a horrid-looking dachshund made of sea shells. Her enthusiasms in the U. S. are for Greta Garbo's cinemas and "the rubberneck busses" which go through San Francisco's Chinatown. She has little interest in clothes, hates social occasions and everything she calls "Kitsch" the German slang for junk, which Lehmann uses to describe everything which is artistically second-rate.

Evidence, in part, of Lotte Lehmann's musicianship are the musical friends she has made. Toscanini attends all her recitals. She is Bruno Walter's favorite singer. The now wise and settled Farrar invites her to her country home in Ridgefield, Conn. A fan Lehmann uses in Der Rosenkavalier is a treasured talisman. Farrar carried it in her glamorous days.

At her best Lehmann is indisputably one of the world's few great singers. Her rich voice is always deeply moving. With Lieder her abundant temperament sometimes gets the best of her. Opera suits her better. In Tannhaeuser her exuberant Elisabeth dominates the stage. In Die Meistersinger she becomes the youthful ingenuous heroine whom Wagner imagined. As Sieglinde in Die Walkuere she has no living peer. Next month Manhattan's critics will have their first chance to pass on her Tosca.

But just as the late Lilli Lehmann will be remembered for Isolde, Garden for Melisande, Farrar for Madame Butterfly, so Lotte Lehmann has one great role which she has made peculiarly her own. In Der Rosenkavalier her Marschallin has all the wisdom and pathos of Strauss's music. She loses in love but she never loses dignity. The season's plume is hers for one scene alone, where she sits before her mirror and realizes sadly and philosophically that she is growing old.

*No kin to famed Lilli Lehmann who died six years ago.

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