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 srage 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 didi n 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 wieh other Lehmanniacs. Send us addresses of interested people. Write to us. We'd like to hear from you.

--Judy Sutcliffe