- Germaine Lubin
Germaine (Léontine Angélique) Lubin (
February 1 1890 -October 27 1979 ) was a French dramaticsoprano best known for her association with the music ofRichard Wagner . She possessed a brilliant voice but her later career was tainted with accusations of Nazi sympathies.Biography
Training
Born in
Paris , Germaine Lubin was soon taken toCayenne in French Guiana where her father was a doctor, and from him she received her first piano lessons. She returned to live in Paris at the age of eight, and attended theCollège Sévigné with the intent of studying to become a doctor. Instead, in 1908 she entered the Paris Conservatory, whereGabriel Fauré was then the director. Fauré formed a high opinion of her voice - and her statuesque beauty - and would accompany her personally in performances of his songs. She left the Conservatory in 1912 after winning three first prizes for her singing, and she was immediately in demand for performances. Throughout most of her career however she continued to take voice lessons, studying for 10 years from 1912 with the Franco-Russian sopranoFélia Litvinne . She would later work on roles withLilli Lehmann andMarie Gutheil-Schoder . She also studied withJean de Reszke , although she felt that he taught her little.Career
In 1912 she made her debut at the
Opéra Comique , singing Antonia in "The Tales of Hoffmann ", to an audience which includedClaude Debussy andPaul Dukas , and she enjoyed a great success. At the Opéra Comique, Albert Carré gave her the chance to appear in numerous contemporary operas, including works by Dukas, ("Ariane et Barbe-bleue ") andGabriel Fauré ("Pénélope"). She also sang Charlotte inJules Massenet 's "Werther " and the title role inGustave Charpentier 's "Louise", and appeared in the world premiere of "Le pays" byGuy Ropartz .In 1913 Lubin married the French poet Paul Géraldy. A son, Claude, was born to them in 1916. Their marriage lasted until 1926. (In 1918, Lubin met Marshal
Philippe Pétain and they conducted a warm correspondence for a while; Pétain declared a wish to marry her, had she been free. Lubin would remain an ardent admirer of Pétain until his death in 1951.Casanova, Nicole. "Isolde 39: Germaine Lubin". (Paris, Flammarion, 1974)] )Lubin made her first appearance at the Paris Opéra in 1915, in d'Indy's "Le Chant de la cloche", and continued to sing there for nearly 30 years. In addition to standard French works, she also found success in the operas of
Christoph Willibald Gluck andRichard Strauss , singing the first French performances of "Elektra" in 1932. She also created roles forVincent d'Indy ,Darius Milhaud , andHenri Sauguet .In 1921 Lubin embarked on the series of Wagner roles for which she would be most admired: first Sieglinde in "
Die Walküre ", then Elsa ("Lohengrin"), and finally Eva ("Die Meistersinger "), all sung in French at the Opéra. Later came Brünnhilde ("Der Ring des Nibelungen " (1928) and Kundry ("Parsifal ") (1938).In 1930 she sang the role of Isolde ("
Tristan und Isolde ") at the Paris Opéra for the first time and met with an ecstatic reception. Her physical beauty - she was tall, slim and blonde - and her strong, even voice made her ideal for the part. She went on to sing it again in Paris in 1938 (this time in German, conducted byWilhelm Furtwängler ), and in London in 1939 (at the invitation of Sir Thomas Beecham). In July 1939 she became the first Frenchwoman to sing Isolde at Bayreuth (under the baton ofVictor de Sabata ). At Bayreuth, she established friendships with members of the Wagner family. She was even complimented byAdolf Hitler , who said she was the finest Isolde that he had heard.Lubin hoped to sing also at the
Metropolitan Opera in New York City, having been recommended to the Met's management byKirsten Flagstad . Owing, however, to the outbreak ofWorld War II in 1939, she never sang in the United States.World War II
After the German occupation of Paris in 1940, Jacques Rouché sought to re-open the Opéra and invited Lubin to return to sing "Alceste". This was followed by performances of "
Fidelio " and "Der Rosenkavalier ", and in 1941 she again sang Isolde, this time with the visiting company of the Staatsoper from Berlin under the direction ofHerbert von Karajan . She continued to associate with German acquaintances, and in 1942 she performed at a concert to mark an exhibition byArno Breker , the sculptor who was closely associated with the Nazi leadership. (She later said that she had agreed to this performance as part of a deal to secure the release of Maurice Franck, the Jewish "chef de chant" at the Opéra.)These activities brought Germaine Lubin under suspicion of collaboration with the Nazis, and after the Liberation in 1944 she was arrested and imprisoned. At her trial in 1946, she was acquitted of the accusation after a number of testimonials were produced from people she had helped during the war. Nevertheless she was sentenced to "dégradation nationale" for life (subsequently reduced to five years), confiscation of property, and "interdiction de séjour" (a form of exile). She found refuge with friends in Italy.
For her part, Lubin denied all ties to Nazi Germany, and grew deeply bitter over her treatment at the hands of the French government. She once said that
I have suffered an enormous injustice. They curtailed my career by ten years - my own people! The fact is that I knew some of the Germans when they came to Paris during the occupation. This gave my enemies the chance to satisfy their envy ... If I saw the Germans in Paris - and they had been more than kind to me - it was to save my compatriots. It was my way of serving my country at that particular moment. Nobody knows how many prisoners I had released ... When I spent three years in prison, they confiscated my château at Tours and my possessions. Did anyone bother to ask me why I did not accept Winifred Wagner’s invitations to sing in Germany during the occupation? But my trial was a complete vindication: I was completely cleared. Yes, they gave back most of what they had taken ... [ [http://www.cantabile-subito.de/Sopranos/Lubin__Germaine/lubin__germaine.html Biographical sketch of Lubin, with photographs and recordings] ]
Later years
In 1950 Germaine Lubin had returned to Paris and sought to resume her career with a recital. Although she met with some sympathy and gave a few further performances, it was a difficult transition, and when in 1953 her son committed suicide she abandoned public performance entirely. For the remainder fo her life she became a voice teacher, giving lessons at her home on the Quai Voltaire in Paris. Among her notable pupils was the leading soprano
Régine Crespin . Lubin died in Paris in 1979 at the age of 89.Lubin had a powerful voice of gleaming tonal splendour. By her own admission she was a forceful and demanding personality, often haughty and distant with other people, and she responded to the heroic dimension of the characters that she portrayed on the operatic stage. "I do not like to sing the role of victims", she said in an interview. ["Mais je n'aime pas chanter les victimes". In an interview given to "Le Quotidien de Paris" on 10 July 1974, reproduced in [http://www.altamusica.com/entretiens/document.php?action=MoreDocument&DocRef=2123&DossierRef=1864 Altamusica] . ]
Recordings
Although Germaine Lubin became the foremost French dramatic soprano during the 1920s and '30s, and indeed one of the finest opera singers to be heard anywhere during the inter-war period, her performances are not particularly well represented on disc. She recorded in 1929-30 a number of excerpts from her central repertoire, notably her Wagnerian roles as well as "
Tosca ", "Der Freischutz " and "Sigurd". She also recorded a few songs bySchubert ,Schumann and her erstwhile admirer Fauré. Among her later recordings from 1944 are two of the earliest featuring the youngGérard Souzay . On the, they perform duets by Leguerney and Blangini. In the 1950s, she also recorded a couple of songs byHugo Wolf . In total her recorded legacy amounts to about two dozen items, many of which are available on CD reissues.References
*Martin Cooper, Elizabeth Forbes: article on Germaine Lubin in: [http://www.grovemusic.com Grove Music Online] ; ed. by L. Macy; (accessed 10 April 2007).
*David Ewen, "Encyclopedia of the Opera: New Enlarged Edition". New York; Hill and Wang, 1963.
* [http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Lubin-Germaine.htm Biography]
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