Luba Tcheresky Remembers Lehmann

Luba was born in Russia and emigrated to the US at the age of 9. She studied with Lehmann for three years at the Music Academy of the Wesc. She has sung throughout the US and Europe both opera and song. She is an active teacher in New York City. She wrote the following many years ago whlle staying at Orplid, Mme. Lehmann's home.

To begin work on a role with Lehmann is like embarking on an exciting adventure...I have my music learned, I have translated and studied my libretto, and have a conception of the role, but I love to leave the detailed intricacies of the character to be worked out with her. How interesting and exhilarating it is to discuss, at the very outset, the conflict of inner emotions in this character, the wonderful feeling of the ease and naturalness with which this role unfolds, grows, and blossoms.

I will take, for an example, the role of Tatiana in Tchaikowsky's "Eugen Onegin". [A role which LL sang.] First, the garden scene in the Act I where Tatiana first sees and meets Onegin---Lehmann interrupts the scene with, "Luba, it's fine, but your walk is bad. Tatiana's feet would scarcely touch the ground, she is on clouds, she listens enraptured to every word Onegin says. She also would not make any quick movements of her head in such a mood...You must think your part every moment you are on stage. You don't just cross the stage, you are thinking of the situation every minute you are making that move, you therefore will do the right thing." She does the cross for you, all the while saying aloud the thoughts that may be running through the mind of Tatiana at this time, and there it is! You try it, is so much easier!... "Excellent," Lehmann cries. God, what you wouldn't go through to hear that from her!

Then in the letter scene, Tatiana is supposed to spring from the couch upon which she has been Iying with firm resolve to write a letter to Onegin and confess her love for him. You go through the action; it seems that you are succeeding, but Lehmann does not settle for just a "good" performance. She stops the scene to say, "Luba, this is a very young girl. She has led a sheltered life. She lives in the same romantic dream-world that she reads about in her books, this is all she knows. Now, she has seen, for the first time, the man of her dreams. This has disturbed her violently. You can hear it in the introduction of the music." Lehmann has fired your imagination, it races, you are oblivious of everyrhing except Tariana's feelings at this moment, and all of a sudden you are no longer Luba playing the role of Tatiana, you are Tatiana, with all her dreams, longings, ideals.

ln the duet finale with Onegin, the tables have turned. Onegin has seen Tatiana at a ball, years after that fatal garden scene where they met and he regarded her only as a young, foolish girl, and spurned her love. Now she appears to him a beautiful, glamourous, mature woman, very desirable...By this time of the opera you think perhaps you have the person of Tatiana quite well engraved in your mind, and therefore in your outward manifestation, but you have not remembered a very important thing, but Lehmann has--again she stops me with, "Luba, you do not walk on with the same kind of agitation you have felt as a very young girl. You are now a mature woman, completely different."

Then there is Lehmann the Human Being...Here again you are awed, at the worldliness yet the naiveté in her, the strength and yet gentleness, her ever present delicous sense of humour, her adoration of nature and animals, and always her love for and interest in life.

She gives her absolute all to her students, never letting down. In addition to being their artistic inspiration, she is concerned with any personal problems they may have and tries to help. Each student feels that he or she is "extra special" to her, and I am sure each one is. Her all-embracing heart is one of the qualities that makes her so beloved by all...One has no feeling of age with this warm, vibrant, magnetic artist and woman. One only feels the immortality of her consciousness suspended in time and space....