Lotte Lenya
By:
October 18, 2009
LOTTE LENYA (1898-1981) once described her voice as “an octave below laryngitis.” With her quavering vibrato and what’s been described as her “cavalier” approach to key, no one would mistake Lenya for a trained singer — but neither could anyone with ears miss what one enraptured reviewer called “the hint of long experience of sorrow in her voice.” Given the name of an older sister who died before she was born (Karoline Blamauer; she changed her name as a young adult), Lenya’s Viennese childhood was the stuff of Gothic nightmares. Her alcoholic father frequently snatched her out of bed, demanded she sing for him, then beat her for not living up to the performances of her dead sibling. As a teenager, she briefly worked as a prostitute. Later there would be four marriages, the best-remembered of which (to composer Kurt Weill) incorporated a divorce, remarriage, and multiple affairs by both partners. Perhaps it’s no surprise that Lenya found a place of refuge in the theater. “As soon as my feet hit the stage — I am safe,” she wrote.
On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: | Chuck Berry |
READ MORE about members of the Hardboiled Generation (1894-1903).