Lotte Lehmann in Santa Barbara, October 1999

--Gary Hickling

Admittedly a facetious headline, but I was on the “Lehmann Trail” for two days in October 1999. On a Sunday I went to the University of California Santa Barbara to check out the accessibility of the Lehmann Archive. Part of the Special Collections in the Main Library, the Lehmann Archive wasn’t very easy to access. The weekend staff didn’t know much about the Archive and it was only when I discovered that there was supposed to be a binder listing the audio portion of the Archive that they located it and I began to search. The listing is poorly organized and so were the cassette tapes that were referenced. So I decided to return Monday when I had an appointment with the new curator. As it turned out, Dr. Seubert, the new curator, is well aware of the problems and is working to resolve them. But, I'm getting ahead of the story. Before leaving the campus Sunday I located Lotte Lehmann Hall. A lecture hall/auditorium, it was closed, but I took photos through the glass door of the Lehmann bust in the foyer.

Then I drove to “Orplid”, Lehmann’s home from 1938-1976 in Hope Ranch Park, Santa Barbara. Lehmann’s companion Frances Holden continued to live there until her death in 1996. The film composer Danny Elfman has bought it, but only begun to repair it. The main house is essentially the same as it was years ago. I took many photos of the house and garden and will include them in the PhotoGallery of this site later.

I first met Lehmann at “Orplid” in 1963, so it was a nostalgic visit. The memories of her teaching there; later social visits; still later after her death researching (some would say rummaging) through the records, tapes and other documents; working with Frances, Judy Sutcliffe and others on the Lehmann Centennial in the garden. Lots of memories tied up in that place. See my article My Lehmann Connection

On Monday I met with David Seubert who fills the new position of curator of the performance arts portions of Special Collections. When one speaks the word “curator”, a casually dressed young man with pierced ears doesn’t spring readily to mind. But Seubert is a thoroughly trained curator who was candid in his responses to the many questions I had. I’ll list those at the end of this article.

Judy Sutcliffe joined Seubert and me. Not many people are as knowledgeable about Lehmann as Judy: she edited the Lehmann biography by Beamont Glass, founded and co-edited the Lotte Lehmann League Newsletter and joined me on the 1989 European trip to locate Lehmann-related items. She was personal friends with Frances Holden and has always been a supporter of Lehmann causes. Judy joined in the discussion with Seubert and then we went over to meet the new head of the Music Department, Sarah Pritchard. Not a specialist in the fields of music where Lehmann made her mark, Dr. Pritchard was nonetheless knowledgeable about the Lehmann Archive and its connection to the Vocal Collection housed at the Music Department. While Judy and I were there, we met Barbara Hirsch, the Music Department audio engineer responsible for transferring the Lehmann Collection to DAT and audio cassette formats in 1989. She is no longer involved in that, but was able to bring us up to date on the details of the various collections. Most important to note: The Lehmann Collection is no longer housed with the Music Department’s Vocal Collection, but is kept in the room that houses the Lehmann Archive at the Main Library. This isn’t really important to the researcher, because, as you’ll read at the end of this article, no browsing is allowed.

We left the Music Department and I went for a luncheon engagement with Mrs. Richard Hellman (known as Dotsy), a Lehmann friend and supporter. A singer herself, Mrs. Hellman had seen Lehmann at the Met and in Salzburg. When Lehmann retired from singing, Mrs. Hellman encouraged Lehmann to teach at the Music Academy of the West. Mrs. Hellman has been, and in her late 90s continutes to be, one of the Music Academy’s great sponsors. She has also agreed to help support the Lotte Lehmann Foundation.

Judy Sutcliffe joined me again at the Music Academy where we met with its President, David Kuehn; Director of Communications, Diane Kataoka; and Vice President of Artistic Operations, Carleen Landes. They agreed to share their wealth of Lehmann material and while we were there photo copied newspaper articles and programs. They have sent the foundation some rare Lehmann photos which now appear on this site. While I was there I photographed the various Lehmann portraits that hang in the beautiful old Music Academy building called Miraflores and rifled through Lehmann’s scores. They kindly photo copied a score for Schubert’s Der Wanderer in which Lehmann has written many suggestions in English for a student. At the beginning before the voice enters: “feel the grandiosity of nature, mountains and ocean sing”; above the words “immer wo” she wrote “like a restrained sigh”; above “ich bin ein Fremdling über all” she wrote “desperately”. Almost every phrase has some suggestion. One that especially appealed to me was “as if in fear of nostalgia” above “o Land, wo bist du?”. At the end, after the singing has stopped, she wrote “fate has decided”.

Can you imagine my excitement as I looked through the years of Lehmann documents, photos, paintings, and even music that Lehmann and Ulanowsky had marked? The very cooperative staff must have been amused at my passion.

Nostalgia and many happy memories of my three summers at the Music Academy filled my mind. The gardens are well-maintained and the hall named for Lehmann looks the same. It is there that I heard Martial Singher, giving a master class in which his student had held the high B flat for two measures (instead of the one written) at the end of Ständchen by Strauss, ask the visiting Lehmann if that was correct. The 78 year old and still vigorous Lehmann stood proudly and said, “Ja, Strauss told me...” And that’s all I remember.

That’s the news from Santa Barbara. Now for the answers provided at the Lehmann Archives. Dr. Seubert said that he’s interested in original sound documents if people wish to donate them. He can make copies for the donor. The Archive no longer has specific money for acquisition or bidding on Lehmann memorabilia and recordings. He believes that the Archive is not a Lehmann research center, but a repository. His curatorial background is evident when he says that he wants to keep “provenance separate” and doesn’t believe that it’s necessary that everything relating to Lehmann should be available. The “provenance” issue relates to the original donation of documents by Lehmann to the library.

When asked about the apparent missing recordings needed to for a complete Lehmann discography, Seubert admitted that it was difficult to know because of the way the recordings are listed. He hopes to create a more user friendly listing; the on-line capabilities of the web will allow much more information about the Archive’s content to be disseminated. And in the future when the various UCSB collections are compared, some more Lehmann 78s may be located. Again, it was his opinion that missing items weren’t a great concern. The audio cassettes (not the original 78s) are available to researchers and they are referenced in the binder I spoke of above. I would estimate that 90% of Lehmann’s discography (both commercial and non-commercial) is available to the patient researcher or vocal student.

The three LP Centennial Lehmann album is still available for $25 (includes postage and handling) made payable to the University of California Regents. See the Newsletter section of this site for more information on these recordings. Judy Sutcliffe asked Dr. Seubert (and later at the Music Academy) about copies of the Winterreise video made of Lehmann’s drawings with her singing. No one seems to know where these videos are now.

The biggest news that Dr. Seubert offered was that the Lehmann Archive is being reprocessed and an inventory will soon be available on line as part of the California digital library, a cooperative effort of all nine UC libraries. <www.cdlib.org> If I may quote Dr. Seubert, "the Lehmann Archive is not yet listed in CDL. The pilot project for listing archival collections only indexed a couple of the UC campuses, UC Berkeley and UCLA I think. We will be in the cue once they get the bugs worked out! The actually finding guide to the Lehmann collection will also eventually be online....the jumping off point for info on the Lehmann archive is:

http://www.library.ucsb.edu/speccoll/pa/pamss02.html

[as of now, nothing much is available]...I'll let you know about future Lehmann plans, and if you hear of materials that might be appropriate for the Lehmann archives or the Performing Arts Collections (particularly other singers!), please let me know." So writes David Seubert.