I could not conceal some surprise, and was obliged to explain: "The American ladies so seldom give their age that your frankness is a revelation."
"The Lilli Lehmann" smiled and said: "Why not? One is thereby no younger."
She turned again to the desk, and went on with the "interview," using her pencil with great firmness and rapidity as she wrote in German, and with all possible abbreviations:
"I was brought up in Prague, where I made my début when eighteen years of age. My mother was my first teacher and constant companion. She was herself a dramatic soprano, well known as Maria Löw, and my father, too, was a singer."
"In what opera did you first appear?"
"It was the 'Magic Flute,' and I appeared in one of the lighter rôles; but two weeks later, during the performance, the dramatic soprano was taken ill, and I then and there went on with her rôle, trusting to my memory after hearing it so often. My mother, who was in the audience and knew I had never studied the part, nearly fainted when she saw me come on the stage as Pamina."
Madame Lehmann's feats of memory have more than once created a sensation. We remember the astonishment aroused in New York music circles five years ago when she mastered the Italian text of "Lucrezia Borgia" in three days.
Recurring to her life in Prague, Madame Lehmann further said:
"I appeared not only in many operas, but also as an actress in many plays. In those days opera singers were expected to be as proficient in the dramatic side of their art as the musical, and we were called upon to perform in all the great tragedies. But nowadays this would be impossible, since the operatic repertoire has become so tremendous."