Rosamund Cole

Abstract

In 2015, the author was invited to visit a villa in Scharfling am Mondsee that had belonged to the world-famous opera singer Lilli Lehmann, whose life and performance style were the focus of her PhD research. The villa was preserved largely in its original state, as proven by photos discovered there, which showed Lehmann and her family enjoying it together. Objects and pictures found in the house are used along with extracts from Lehmann’s diaries and correspondence between her and Victor Maurel, her intimate friend, to retell some of Lehmann’s story including her relationship with the famous baritone. Focusing in particular on the time when Lehmann built this house, the article reveals some of the emotions beneath the surface of the family photographs and speculates that Lehmann may have given her husband the house as settlement to avoid a scandalous divorce. Some of the valuable works of art by painters such as the secessionist Carl Moll, Albin Egger-Lienz, Hans Volkmer and Bernhard Zickendraht as well as previously unknown portraits of the singer were discovered and identified by the author using accompanying documentation found in the Villa. These are also revealed in the article in photos taken by the architectural photographer Günter Wett, whose 2017 documentation of the house shows it in its unaltered condition.

Keywords: Lilli Lehmann, Villa Lehmann, Scharfling am Mondsee, Paul Kalisch, Hedwig Helbig, Hans Volkmer, Carl Moll, Peder Severin Krøyer, Salzburg Festspiele, opera, singing

Full text: OAJ ISSUE 11 FINAL_Article_8

DOI: 10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2024s08

Biographical note

Rosamund Cole worked as a Senior Lecturer for Singing at Leeds College of Music before gaining her PhD from the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in 2018 (Supervisor: Prof. Richard Wistreich) supported by a full AHRC studentship. She has been invited as a guest lecturer at Royal College of Music, Detmold Musikhochschule, the RNCM and the Salzburg Festival Conference 2019. During her PhD she held a full AHRC Kluge Scholarship at the Library of Congress, Washington DC and was awarded a scholarship from the American Musicology Society to research the Lilli Lehmann House. Prior to academia, she worked as a full-time soloist for opera houses in Germany including die Bühnen der Stadt Köln, Staatstheater Darmstadt, Stadttheater Heidelberg and Theater Erfurt. She also worked for the National Theatre in Prague and Opera North, which sponsored her vocal training which she undertook at the National Opera Studio, London, and the Royal Northern College of Music.

Rosamund Cole and the editors of the Open Arts Journal are most grateful to Günter Wett for allowing publication of his photographs in this essay.

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