Toscanini Retired?

I dare not believe it, says Lotte Lehmann.

April 11, 1954 Santa Barbara News Press

We take it for granted that our sun will shine forever. We see it go down in the evening and know tomorrow it will rise again. How would we react if one day we should hear that it would never come back? That it will be with us in a soft afterglow which will envelop the world with subdued splendor---but from now on the warm, glowing radiance will be lost to us. We would be confused and would not dare to believe such news.

Maestro Arturo Toscanini has announced his decision to retire. I dare not believe it.

If anyone has a right to retire it should be he. His whole long life has been complete devotion to music. Perhaps in his eighties he should enjoy the serenity and peacefulness of a private existence. And yet---saying this---I feel the impossibility of imagining him apart from his work, apart from music, apart from creation in music. How will he bear it?

I see his face before me in this moment, his dark brows knitted into a savage black line over his beautiful eyes (which are not as black as they seem, they are actually a soft, warm brown---little golden sparks flicker in their depths). But his glance would be black if he should hear me say that he couldn’t bear to live without music, that I could think his interest in life so limited. ...He told me once he has a deep love for paintings, that he could sit before one holding it in his hands, close to his very near-sighted eyes and study it, penetrating its beauty for a long time. He likes to read and is able to do so in many languages. In a rehearsal of Meistersinger in Salzburg, I remember he once corrected the pronunciation of a German singer to the amazement of all of us.

It is hard to know where to start in telling of my reminiscences of the Maestro. I met him first in New York when he conducted his first commercial [radio] broadcast---for General Motors. He had heard me shortly before this in Vienna in the premiere of Richard Strauss’ Arabella. This had been a terrible day for me: my mother whom I had loved more than I can say, had died the day before the performance. It would have been understandable and excusable if I had canceled my appearance. But one could not do that. “The show must go on.” There was no one who could take my place, the house was sold out, it was a tremendous occasion, a Strauss premier. So I sang. Someone told me that Toscanini was in the audience---but I was so deeply unhappy that nothing made an impression on me. On that night I only lived as Arabella...

Later I heard that Toscanini had been very moved when he heard of the circumstances under which I had sung. His comment was: “That is the sign that she is a real artist.”

As a result of this performance he selected me for this broadcast.

I shall never forget the day I went to his hotel in New York for a rehearsal. I had to sing the great aria of Fidelio and Elisabeth’s aria from Tannhäuser.

At this time I was already a well known singer, at home in the great world, having sung in all the important opera houses throughout Europe. So one wouldn’t believe that I could be scared of Toscanini. But where is the singer who is not scared of him! He does not like this at all. It makes him very impatient and he expresses his displeasure in no uncertain terms. He just can’t understand the strange magic of his overpowering personality. I remember how I felt as I looked into those burning eyes, commanding me: sing! I started---the tone stuck in my throat! I almost broke into tears. And stammering that I was just scared to death of him, I tried again. The rehearsal was long and exhausting. Exhausting because of the tremendous inner tension with which I tried to do justice to all his commands.

I really don’t remember how the concert went. I just wasn’t on earth at all. The Maestro was satisfied with my singing---and no crown jewel could have given me more delight than his smile.

We were photographed together and he was in such a good mood that he permitted with great affability, what I took for granted, not knowing that he hated photographers and anything to do with publicity. I did not realize then that this meeting with him would be a very important day in my life.

Toscanini’s friendship and his enthusiasm for me as an artist have been the climax of my career. Unforgettable were the rehearsals with him in Salzburg where he conducted Fidelio a year after our concert! For us each rehearsal was a performance. There was no possibility of every letting down, of taking it easy. Everyone had to give to his fullest capacity---and even if he had not ordered us to do so, we would have done it, because he himself always gave his whole heart and his whole soul.

Needless to say that in the performance the audience went wild. After the third Leonore overture the whole house seemed to be in a frenzy---and we singers applauded like mad behind stage. Everyone who has seen him knows his helpless gesture of refusal: “It is not I who deserve this praise, it is the composer. I only did what he expected of me.” He has said this so often. Once when in my adoration I perhaps went too far, he said, quite annoyed: “But don’t you see that I am nobody to be glorified as you are doing? I am just a good conductor, that’s all.”

The Vienna Orchestra worshipped him---but they often had to endure fits of his terrible Italian temper which have become legendary. I once heard one orchestra member say to another: “One really doesn’t know how one should feel about this demon of a man. Should one hate him or should one kneel down?”

This remark is very typical. It was the way we all felt about him. But I believe no one ever hated him in reality. All of us wanted to kneel down...

Nerve-racking rehearsals of Die Meistersinger in Salzburg! I shall never forget them. After so many years the memory of them still makes me shudder...

He was never satisfied with anything we did. But instead of going into one of his dreaded fits of fury, he sat there quietly and looked at us with an icy stare of contempt. We were so nervous that we stumbled over the easiest phrase. I fought against tears and finally, unable to stand it any longer, I took my heart in my hand and went to him through breathless silence. I said to him: “Maestro, we want to do what you want us to do. But we don’t know what you want. Please tell us and we will do it.”

He raised his dark eyes and said with the touching expression of a dying dear: “There is no fire in this performance...” No fire! Any fire would have been extinguished by his icy silence...Fire! All right! We threw ourselves into our roles and in the end we got his wonderful smile...

I remember the general rehearsal of Meistersinger as an especially unforgettable experience. Certainly the performance was wonderful but somehow the general rehearsal seemed to me the climax. In the last act when the chorus sings the glorious tribute to Hans Sachs, the singer of the Hans Sachs role was so overwhelmed that he turned around with tears in his eyes and whispered to us: “How can I ever sing now? This demon has completely devastated me with his fire.”

I was in an intoxication of delight and after the performance tore into his room without even knocking at the door. There he stood, scarcely dressed---and I can still see the incredulous look of shock in the eyes of his chauffeur and faithful factotum Emilio as he stood motionless holding the Maestro’s trousers in his hands. But I paid no attention to him. I ran to the Maestro, kissed him, said “Thank you” and was out of the room...

Once in Fidelio I made a dreadful musical mistake in the last act. Knowing that this was a mortal sin, I felt terribly. I could only go to him and beg his forgiveness, but I didn’t dare to enter his room. I stood outside, trembling and wiping away my tears until his very kind wife Signora Carla took me by the hand and pulled me into the room. What could I say? I could only stammer: “Forgive me.”

He turned his sinister glance upon me, but before he could answer I added: “I shall weep the whole night.”

“All right, go home and weep,” was his answer. But I saw a flicker of his smile...

I remember one day as the sunniest of my whole life. In a little village near Salzburg, as was the custom there, a young peasant couple, the poorest in the village, was chosen to have their wedding celebrated in the most spectacular fashion. They received money, all their household furnishings, linen, silver, everything. Our Chancellor Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg was to be present, the Archbishop was to marry them and everyone with a name and position was invited to attend the ceremony. The Toscanini family was there and I sang in the church. The presence of the Maestro was especially inspiring even if it did make me a little nervous. What a wonderful day! The little village was filled to capacity with all the peasants, appearing in their beautiful fiesta [Lehmann lived in Santa Barbara when she wrote this] outfits. The young bridal couple was surrounded by a glamor they had never before seen or dreamed of seeing.

After the ceremony we participated in the big dinner. I sat beside the Maestro who was in wonderful humor and opposite us sat the Chancellor. We had to autograph one post card after another and that the Maestro did it without complaining was the greatest miracle of this miraculous wedding...After dinner the Toscaninis came home with me and we had such a wonderful time. He could be so simple, so utterly kind, so absolutely different from the demonic figure on the conductor’s podium.

Shortly after this I sang in one of his concerts in Vienna. It was the first time I had sung Isolde’s Liebestod, the ending of that heavenly role which I never sang in opera because it was too dramatic for my lyrical voice. To sing it in concert is rather nerve-racking: one has to sit through the whole long prelude and then the beginning of the aria is difficult because the orchestra doesn’t give any musical cue. One has to start, so to speak, out of nowhere...I told the Maestro that I was terribly nervous and that I would certainly die of shock if out of nervousness I should start with the wrong note. He promised to give me the tone and I mustn’t worry. I really didn’t. But he did. Through half the prelude he hummed the tone and since his voice is notoriously hoarse and rough I could scarcely tell what tone it was...But I started right and everything was saved...I shall remember forever the feeling of intoxication and utter abandon as I sang Isolde’s last words: “Ertrinken, versinken, unbewusst, höchste Lust” (to drown, to merge---unconscious---bliss sublime.) The music was like an overpowering surf in which I sank, lost in the splendor of sound...

And so I feel in remembering my association with Toscanini. The overwhelming strength of his magical personality is akin to the power of the ocean---devastating in its fury---awe-inspiring in its grandeur.

We shall have his recordings---that is true. In his perfection he will be with us. But that we shall never again be able to feel his nearness, to see him conducting, to see his face tortured through concentration, that I cannot and dare not believe.

He may have a long rest after exhausting work, he may feel well again and return to us.

I sent him a telegram on his birthday saying: “Years do not count with you. You are ageless. Stay with us for many years to come and make this world a better one.”

I say it again with all my heart.