Lotte Leonard

Lotte Leonard , actually Charlotte Levy (born December 3, 1884 in Hamburg , † May 2, 1976 in Kfar Schmarjahu near Tel Aviv ) was a German concert singer ( soprano ) and singing teacher.

Life

Lotte Leonard studied at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin with the soprano Jeanette Grumbacher-de Jong and the contralto Therese Behr-Schnabel . She taught the latter mainly in song singing. This then formed the focus of her singing career. In the mid-1920s, the Tonkünstlerlexikon described her as a “very respected concert singer”. By then she had already completed several extensive tours abroad. In later years she worked mainly as a singing teacher. Leonard was married to the music researcher and writer Heinrich Levy (1878-1946), who went into exile with her in 1933, first to France and then to the USA. After finishing teaching in New York, she lived in Israel until her death.

singing

Leonard performed as a concert singer in Prague, Madrid and Vienna and toured the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Italy, Sweden and Poland. She also completed splendid concert tours in North and South America. A cycle of concerts in Buenos Aires was entitled Das deutsche Lied . In Cincinnati she sang at the May Festival . She often appeared as a soloist at concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic Choir under Siegfried Ochs . In 1928 she performed the soprano solo in Israel in Egypt by Georg Friedrich Handel on the stage of La Scala in Milan , and in 1931 she was called to the Salzburg Festival for the soprano solo in the Missa solemnis by Ludwig van Beethoven .

Leonard sang numerous recordings with her expressive soprano voice, "always admired in the style of her interpretation." The 9th Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven was later released on CD , a recording from 1928 with her as a soloist under Oskar Fried . Besides numerous other recordings, Beethoven's Missa solemnis appeared as a shellac record with her participation. In addition, there were countless songs and arias, such as the songs Born to Bethlehem and Maria auf dem Berge , the folk songs You, you are close to my heart and oh, how is it possible then (each as a duet with the baritone Hermann Schey ), the Ave Maria by Franz Schubert , the letter duet from Figaro's wedding by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (together with Irene Eisinger ) and numerous songs and cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach .

Vocal pedagogy

Leonard began to teach singing at the Bernuth Conservatory in Berlin at an early age . When she was no longer allowed to work in Germany after 1933, she received a professorship at the Conservatoire de Paris . From there she only returned to concerts at the Jüdischer Kulturbund Berlin in 1934 and 1935 , including appearing in the oratorio Judas Maccabeus by Georg Friedrich Handel. In 1940 she fled France from the advancing German troops and finally reached North America, where she was able to continue her vocal teaching career in New York at the Juilliard School of Music and at Mannes College . Her students included the contralto Dora Wyss (in Berlin), the mezzo-soprano Marina de Gabarain (in Paris) and the sopranos Lucie Siegrist (in Berlin) and Alpha Floyd (in New York).

literature

• Leonard, Lotte , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 221
• Leonard, Lotte , in: Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography . Volume 7. Chernivtsi, 1928, p. 232f.
• Leonard, Lotte , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 709

Web links

• Lotte Leonard Archive in the Archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin
• Lotte Leonard at Bach Cantatas (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Paul Frank / Wilhelm Altmann : Kurzgefaßtes Tonkünstlerlexikon, Verlag Carl Merseburger, Leipzig 1926. ISBN 3-7959-0083-2
2. ^ ^{A b} Karl-Josef Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singing dictionary . Electronic edition of the third, expanded edition. Directmedia, Berlin 2004