Resonance in Singing: Voice Building through Acoustic Feedback

Abstract

Michael H. Kater, Never Sang for Hitler The Life and Times of Lotte Lehmann. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Cloth, xv, 394 pp., $35.00. ISBN 978-0-521-87392-5 www.cambridge.org Lotte Lehmann (1888-1976) ranks among the best known singers of the last century. Like those of other European artists of her generation, Lehmanns career played out against a canvas of two world wars and the resulting socioeconomic conditions. Michael H. Kater, who is a history professor at York University in Toronto, offers a meticulously researched study of the renowned soprano in Never Sang for Hitler. Relying upon primary documents that have become available in the past twenty years, Kater deftly describes Lehmann the artist, Lotte the woman, and the times in which she lived Biographic information is carefully balanced with historical background, including the social, economic, and political events of her life. Growing up in a small town in northern Germany, Lehmann was exposed to music through her family circle. As a teenager, she moved to Berlin with her family, and was admitted to the Musikhochschule. When her instructors began steering her toward a career in oratorio, Lehmann-with unwavering certainty-withdrew without earning a diploma and searched for a teacher who would help her prepare to sing opera. By 1910, Lehmann had secured a contract with the Hamburg Stadttheater and launched an international career that would last decades on stages in Vienna, Berlin, London, Paris, New York, and other major cities. Kater is not a musicologist, but a historian whose primary research interest is the society, politics, and culture of modern Germany. Accordingly, he looks beyond Lehmann to the world around her, while keeping his subject clearly in focus. The author paints fascinating pictures of the backdrops of Lehmann's life, whether Hamburg at the turn of the century, post-World War I Vienna, or the United States during World War II, Kater's fastidiously documented examination accurately chronicles events in the singer's life, even in contradiction to Lehmann's own recollections. The title of the book alludes to a case in point. The soprano did not sing in Germany after 1934. Lehmann maintained that it was a result of her abhorrence for the Nazi regime. Kater's research indicates, however, that it stemmed from Lehmann's dissatisfaction with the terms of a contract, sanctioned by Hermann Goring, that was offered by the Berlin Staatsoper to lure her away from Vienna. Goring was incensed mat she had tried to negotiate its terms as any other business agreement instead of considering the appointment an honor to serve the German people. Shortly thereafter, the Nazi authorities informed her Berlin agent . . a performance by Frau Lotte Lehmann in Germany was not desirable. After the Anschluss of 1938, Lehmann left Austria and settled permanently in the United States. Kater paints an arresting portrait of Lehmann. Her singing was respected by Richard Strauss (she premiered the roles of the Composer in the second version of Ariadne auf Naxos, and the Dyer's Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten, while the Marschallin from Der Rosenkavalier was her signature role) and Puccini (who wrote complimentary letters after hearing her sing the roles of Suor Angelica and Manon), as well as conductors Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, and Arturo Toscanini, to mention only a few. …

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