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Lilli
Lehmann --the great Wagnerian -- helped to open the first
Bayreuth Festival in 1876. She specialized in Wagner, of course, but
she sang everything. One of her pupils was none other than
legendary soprano Olive Fremstad, modeled herself after this greatest of
Wagnerians, and another was Geraldine Farrar, who applied to
study with Lehmann for "polishing" after her successful
European debut. Lehmann was also part of the greatest opera
cast never assembled in a Don Giovanni at Salzburg in 1914,
when she would have sung Donna Anna to Feodor Chalyapin's Leporello,
Geraldine Farrar's Zerlina, and John McCormack as Don Ottavio. |
