Leicht muss man sein

Hugh Canning. International Opera Collector; Spring 1999.

The author examines various performances of the role of the Marshallin in Der Rosenkavalier by Strauss. Of course he mentions Lehmann.

“The most famous of pre-war Marshallins was unquestionable Lehmann, one of the great Elsas and Sieglindes of her day, who created the lyric soprano role of the Composer in the Vienna premiere of Aridane II and the dramatic soprano role of the Dyer’s Wife in Die Frau ohne Schatten. Lehmann’s voice must have developed gradually into the heavier parts, for she is the first of several celebrated Rosenkavalier ‘hat-trick’ holders: sopranos who have progressed from Sophie to Octavian to the Marshallin. [Actually the first to do so.]...

Lehmann’s Marscahllin was, of course, the first to be captured substantially by the gramophone and the ‘abridged’ HMV recording of Der Rosenkavalier, conducted by Robert Heger and with its famous constellation of co-starts--Maria Olszewska as Octavian, Elisabeth Schumann as Sophie, the ripely characterful and sonorous Richard Mayr as Ochs---has accorded her interpretation an almost iconic status, at least among sopranos who sang the role during the composer’s lifetime.

The recording remains an important document, not least because Lehmann was clearly one of the sopranos who served as inspirational muse to Strauss: in addition to the Composer and Dyer's Wife, she was also entrusted with the creation of one of his most individual and beloved protagonists, Christine Storch in Intermezzo, a thinly disguised portrait of Strauss’s wife Pauline.

By 1933, when the HMV recordings were made, Lehmann was already 45 or approaching it---as was, more astonishingly yet, her exact contemporary Elisabeth Schumann, [acutally born in 1885] who sang Sophie--and the voice, an instrument of burnished old gold, was beginning to show its age: the bottom register, in particular, sounds chesty and robust, lending Lehmann’s Marie-Therese a matronly quality which I personally find hard to take today. It’s hard to tell whether the limitations of the recording process or the passage of time are principally responsible for the hardening of Lehmann’s vocal sinews, but there remain phrases which she sings with a tonal refulgence and easy delivery which few Marshallins of the modern era have matched: her expansive singing of her instruciton to her little black page, Mohamed, ‘Da drin ist die silberne Ros’n’, still has the power to thrill the ear.

And Lehmann’s dramatic conception of the role manages to convince despite her age: she is coquettish with both Octavian and Ochs, using a sly portamento (‘Du, Schatz!’) to convey her amusement at the Mariandel disguise, and she seems more tolerant than most of her successors of her ‘aufgeblasene, schlechte Kerl’ of a cousin. Indeed, from the histrionic point of view, Lehmann maintains the melancholic and frivouous sides of the Marschallin’s personality in carefully balanced equilibrium: the dry eye much in evidence in her teasing of her lover and remonstrations with Ochs, the wet one in her nostalgic reminiscences of ‘die kleine Resi’ fresh from the convent in the Act 1 monologue and espcially in the ‘Heut’ oder morgen’ section the the succeeding duet with Octavian. Long experience of the opera has evidently led to a deep understanding of the Marshallin’s mercurial temperament: her tears are not self-pitying ones and they do not for long dull the twinkle in her eye...

Two recordings of the Met broadcasts of Der Rosenkavalier exist--the score heavily cut, though less so than the HMV studio version--preserving Lehmann’s Marschallin of the late 1930’s, by which time she was in her fifties. I have not yet heard the taping Naxos is about to release, [see above] but the performance of February 5th, 1938, conducted by Artur Bodanzky is available on Lys (326-327). As in many live recordings of this period, it is not always possible to discern the nuances of the singers’ interpretations. By comparison, the HMV set is revelatory, but it is interesting to hear one of the great Hans Sachses and Wotans of the day, Friedrich Schorr, lavishing his substantial Heldenbariton on the old fusspot Faninal...”