Where does this leave Lehmann? She would belong in the B-to-B category. In her youth, as we hear on the Marston discs, she had access to a high C and, a little squeakily, the D-flat needed for Butterfly’s entrance. However, she also had that fine low extension, at least as far down as G. (I) So we can assert that throughout the twenty-plus years of her vocal prime, Lehmann had a for-the-public range of about two-and-a-half octaves, of which—if we continue to assume the three-register, “fixed break” model—about a seventh lay in “chest,” an octave in “middle,” and a fifth in “head.” If the weightings of that distribution seem improbable in so well-balanced a voice, we can for the sake of argument introduce a “moveable break” model, according to which it is assumed not merely that there is some “give” in the area(s) of transition, but that the center(s) of the area(s) move significantly up or down in individual voices. But that wouldn’t correspond to anything we hear in Lehmann’s voice (or, I might add, in any other long-ranged, well-balanced, long-enduring instrument).
Lehmann kept her tone well-gathered, on center, throughout her wide range. Though she lost a bit of reach at the top in her later years, her recordings never display any of the problems we often associate with upper-middle tessitura in female voices. In fact, when Michael Aspinall states that her technique is founded on “three properly developed and blended registers constituting a seamless scale,” I’d reply that Lehmann is a particularly poor exemplar for the three-register theory. Except for very occasional and very minor shadings of the sort I have cited, she sails through that territory without modifications or, seemingly, any awareness of a “secondo passaggio.” There’s no doubt, though, that such problems as accumulating weight and stiffness, vowel distortions, or wobbliness exist to one degree or another in that region of many mature women’s voices, and that in young, developing ones, the upper F or F# is also the place where tone typically begins to thin out; it may even “break.”
Footnotes
| ↑I | Unless I’m overlooking something, we don’t hear the G on any of her recordings. But she was the first Färberin in Die Frau ohne Schatten, and while we usually associate that role with the typical high Straussian soprano line of the later scenes, in her dialogue with Barak in Act 1, Scene 2, she has several low A’s, and later, with the Nurse, the second half of the crucial utterance “So ist es gesprochen und geschworen in meinem Innern,” sits on the G. Strauss wrote the part with Lehmann in mind, and she prepared it intensively with him. He gave her an unaccompanied bar for these notes, knowing that that she could project them into the far reaches of the house with musically formed, dramatically colored tone. Interestingly, though the part of the Nurse is designated “alt,” it was sung at the premiere by another soprano, Lucie Weidt. For a taste of her quite fierce-sounding chest, hear her version of the Fidelio aria. Weidt was soon replaced by more alto-ish singers, but Lehmann retained the role of the Färberin through several subsequent revivals—clearly, her basically sympathetic voice and presence is what Strauss wanted for the part. |
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