Lilli Lehmann

Lilli Lehmann was a German soprano who had an active performance career spanning from 1865 into the 1920s. One of the great sopranos of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, music critics hailed her as a peer to other celebrated singers of that era such as Jenny Lind and Adelina Patti. In her early career she performed lighter soprano roles from mainly the lyric coloratura soprano repertoire; and it is in this rep that she was known while a prima donna at the Berlin Hofoper from 1869 through 1885. In 1884 she made her first foray into the dramatic soprano canon at the Royal Opera House in London when she performed the part of Isolde in Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. She thereafter performed roles from a wide range of fachs in the soprano literature; mastering more than 170 different opera characters during her extraordinarily long career. Unlike many singers, her voice maintained its flexibility as it grew in size allowing her to be successful in the dramatic coloratura soprano repertoire.