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Did we not together listen to that voice and watch with breathless interest his investiture of Don Giovanni, in the golden days when Lilli Lehmann and the De Reszkes took the other parts. Was there ever a more elegant courtly Don, a greater Falstaff, a more intriguing Iago? In those youthful days, my friend's greatest ambition was to be able to sing and act like Maurel.
The cast was as follows: Isolde, Lilli Lehmann; Brangane, Marianne Brandt; Tristan, Albert Niemann; Kurwenal, Adolf Robinson; Konig Marke, Emil Fischer; Melot, Rudolph von Milde; ein Hirt, Otto Kemlitz; ein Steuermann, Emil Saenger; ein Seemann, Max Alvary. Two circumstances bid us look a little carefully into the instrumental prelude with which Wagner has prefaced his drama.
A dramatic soprano may be able to sing florid rôles, but never with the success of the soprano whose natural gifts are of the florid order. A Wagner singer rarely succeeds in the traditional Italian rôles, nor a singer of these in Wagner rôles. Lilli Lehmann always insisted that Norma was one of her great rôles, and craved the opportunity to sing it here.
"Talking of malaria," she began, in her serenest manner, "I always remember what my dearest Madame Lilli told me. It was at one of Prince Teano's concerts. You remember, signorino?" "Che! How should I remember?" he exclaimed. "It was a lifetime ago, dead and forgotten." The old lady shrank, as if a glass of water had been rudely thrown in her face. She said nothing, staring blindly.
The world, the flesh, and the devil lurk in the larynx of the soprano or alto, and her place is before the footlights, not as a vocal staircase to paradise. I say this, knowing in my heart that nothing is so thrilling as Tristan and Isolde, and my memory-cells hold marvellous pictures of Lilli Lehmann, Milka Ternina, and Olive Fremstad.
Niemann, of course, is fifty-eight years old, but many of the younger German singers too often have their bad quarter-hours; and even Lilli Lehmann whom I would rather hear for my own pleasure than any other singer now on the stage emits occasionally a disagreeable guttural sound. Nothing of the sort in Mme.
Many profitable hours were spent wandering through the galleries and museums, hearing concerts and opera, and visiting the old quarters of the city, so picturesque and full of memories. Two of us, who were musicians, were anxious to meet the famous dramatic soprano, Lilli Lehmann, who was living quietly in one of the suburbs of the city.
Huneker describes the old Lienau's, where William Steinway, Anton Seidl, Theodore Thomas, Scharwenka, Joseffy, Lilli Lehmann, Max Heinrich, and Victor Herbert used to gather. Follow Alfred Hertz and you will be in excellent company in a double sense. Then watch him consume a plateful of Viennese pastry.
But I suppose there must be a reason why a whole nation should go on having windows that won't open at the top." "I do not know, except that we have always had them like that, so probably it is better to go on," said Lilli, after a few seconds' reflection, during which she looked exceedingly charming.
"It is what they like," said Lilli. "But we have another woman for the floors and beating out the rugs, and doing the brass, so it is not so much." "Floors and rugs and brass every day, too?" "Of course," returned both girls together, as if I had asked them about their baths or their tooth-brushes. "Of course." Lisbeth opened the door of a front room on the second floor.
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