Singer
24 November 1848, Wurzburg, Bavaria - 17 May 1929, Berlin
Lilli Lehmann built the Salzburg Festival before it existed. From 1901, she organised the annual Salzburg Mozart Week, performing lead roles herself, directing rehearsals, and establishing the tradition of Salzburg as a permanent home for serious Mozart performance. When Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Reinhardt, and Richard Strauss founded the formal Festival in 1920, they were building on what she had created.
Lilli Lehmann was the most celebrated dramatic soprano of the late 19th century. She had sung Brunnhilde and Isolde at Bayreuth, Donna Anna at the Metropolitan Opera, and more than 170 roles across 119 operas over a career that spanned four decades. She was one of the great singers in history. She was also something else: the person who decided that Salzburg should be the permanent home of serious Mozart performance, and who went out and built it.
From 1901 she organised the Salzburg Mozart Week, an annual series of concerts and opera performances at the Mozarteum Concert Halls and other Salzburg stages. She sang the lead roles herself. She directed rehearsals while standing on the podium. She brought her authority and her international connections to a provincial city and made it feel, for a few weeks each summer, like the centre of something important. She did this every year until 1910.
She was also a teacher. Her 1902 manual Meine Gesangskunst introduced systematic approaches to head-voice placement that influenced vocal pedagogy for a generation. Her students included Geraldine Farrar and Olive Fremstad, both of whom went on to major international careers. The Mozarteum Concert Halls carry traces of her work to this day.
When Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Reinhardt, and Richard Strauss established the Salzburg Festival formally in 1920, the idea of Salzburg as a festival city was not new. Lilli Lehmann had been building it for nearly two decades. She is not to be confused with Lotte Lehmann, the interwar soprano: the shared surname causes persistent confusion in tourist literature, but the two women are unrelated.
Locations
Built 1910-1914
The Mozarteum Foundation is the institution that runs both of Salzburg's Mozart museums, organizes the Mozart Week festival each January, and operates the concert hall on Schwarzstrasse where major chamber and orchestral programming happens outside the Salzburg Festival.
Organizations
One of the world's most prestigious performing arts festivals. Held annually late July to end of August. Founded 1920 by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Reinhardt, Richard Strauss, Franz Schalk, and Alfred Roller. Inaugural event: Jedermann on Domplatz. Herbert von Karajan defined the postwar era. Opera, drama, concerts.
