When they Criticized

We're used to reading the wonderful things they have said about Lehmann's singing, but I thought we should read some critical words as well.

In 1934 when Lehmann sang Butterfly in San Francisco, Marjory Fisher in The News called it "more Italian than Japanese" and said the acting "verged on the melodramatic in the tragic moments, but she was amazingly youthful and girlishly animated in the first act, and in the second, the matured woman who has known much agony".

When Boris Goldovsky was a young man he was rehearsing Der Rosenkavalier for Rodzinski when he noticed the LL sang a line toward the end of the first act "with pitches and rhythms quite unlike those that were indicated in the score." He didn't know how to bring it to her attention without offending her or perhaps showing his ignorance that perhaps Strauss himself had made changes. He asked if they could try it again and LL replied: "'mein lieber Knabe, you know I have sung this role under most of the great conductors of our time---under Klemperer, under Bruno Walter, under Furtwängler, under Knappertsbusch, Kleiber, and Reiner. I was coached in this role by them all, and even, as you probably know, by Richard Strauss himself!' She paused...'You know, as far as this sentence is concerned, never mind it's no use. I will never learn it right."' He was relieved that no row had ensued and writes, "Instead, she had paid gracious homage to my knowledge of the score. Her way of singing those two verses, as a matter of fact,---was probably better than it would have been had she sung the phrase correctly." -GH