One of the most appreciated American Lieder singers on the international platform of her era, New Orleans's Lena Little is little remembered today ...
LITTLE, [Martha] 'Lena' (b New Orleans, 19 September 1853; d 2321 Esplanade Avenue, New Orleans, 5 July 1920)
American mezzo-contralto who specialised in German music.
Lena Little was born in New Orleans of a Canadian father, builder Robert Little, and a Pennsylvanian mother. I don’t know if there was German blood a generation back in her family, but she became effectively a ‘honorary German’ in, at least, her musical career.
I first spot Lena singing in her home-town in 1875 (15 February) singing at the Temple Sinai ('impressive and delightful voice'), with the Anthon Memorial Church Choir, at the Sylvester Larned Institute ('O Rest in the Lord'), in 1876-7 with the New Orleans Philharmonic Society, sang the role of Zerish in Esther the Beautiful Queen (2 May 1876), in various church concerts ('O Salutaris', Massé's 'Adoration'), and in 1878 (17 May), in a Festival of local performers (‘O crudel perche’, Mattei’s ‘Entends-tu’).
In 1880, she moved to New York, where she became the contralto at All Souls Church, 14th Street and 6th avenue, and made her first local appearances as a concert vocalist, amongst which at Steinway Hall, under the baton of Dr Leopold Damrosch. On 4 March 1882, she made one such appearance singing Handel’s ‘Furibondo spiro il vento’ (Partenope) and Schumann songs. The latter were better liked than the former, she was tagged a ‘pleasant light mezzo’ rather than a contralto, and her vibrato was noted, but she was nevertheless accepted as a ‘promising debutante’ and the critic honed in on what would be – rather than a voice of particular quality -- her career-long speciality as a vocalist: ‘[She is] not only the possessor of a sweet voice but has the musical gift which enables her to interpret the works of a great master in acceptable style’. Miss Little, from the beginning, was recognised as singer for the composer, rather than one wishing only exhibit her voice.
She sang in a number of other Damrosch concerts, including the New York Oratorio Society’s presentation of the conductor’s Sulamith (Steinway Hall, 21 May 1882), and on various other local programmes -- including a society Lady Jane (Patience) -- with songs by Greig, Rubinstein etc, until June 1883, when she sailed for Europe ‘with Mr G Schirmer and his family to study in Europe with Mme Garcia and Stockhausen’. She was reported to be in Frankfurt with Stockhausen, but the ‘study’ lasted less than a year before she set foot in London.
My first sightings of Miss Little in the London concerts confirm the Stockhausen-German connection. She turns up at St James's Hall singing Schumann's The King's Son, on 30 April singing with Lieder star Thekla Friedländer at Frln Jeffe's concert and at Prince’s Hall, 27 May 1884, performing, in tandem with her teacher’s prize pupil, Sophie Löwe, the complete (16 songs) Schumann Dichterliebe. The occasion was noticed as 'rather above average' and Lena as being 'of more than ordinary promise', and attracted much notice. During the next year, I see her also on the London platform with American-Paris colleague, Gertrude Griswold, at the Crystal Palace, at the New Club with an Austrian Band, and in further concerts with Miss Löwe (Prince’s Hall, Crystal Palace, Emil Mahr) and Dannreuther. She and Miss Griswold also took part, with expatriate amateurs, in a ‘a Grand American Concert’ (23 June 1885) in which their singing of the Lakmé duet, and Lena’s ‘When the heart is young’ saved the night.
Manchester 1885
In April 1885, Lena netted the job which would be the backbone of her British career, and establish her reputation by the opportunities it provided. In 1880, violinist-impresario Hermann Franke had launched the Richter concerts, conducted by Hans Richter from Vienna, and which displayed mostly German music with great popularity. Lena Little was hired to sing in the five provincial concerts (‘Che faro’, Clemenza di Tito) preceding the London season, and thereafter she featured in the concerts, in both London and the provinces, for four seasons, performing the Alto Rhapsody, the Choral Symphony, Beethoven’s Mass in D, and in the Rhinemaidens’ Music. A series of Liszt songs (‘Kennst du die Land’ ‘Three Gipsies’, ‘Loreley’), and pieces by Beethoven, Schubert, Jensen, Massenet or Widor, were also amongst the vocal pieces featured, in her ‘rich deep contralto voice’.
She had evidently come on since early days, since the press now referred to her ‘earnestness and intelligence ... her voice seems to increase in richness of tone and in expressiveness every year, and her occupying a leading position amongst our concert singers is merely a matter of time’ but still of ‘the refinement and depth of feeling for which that artist is famous’.
Franke formed a quartet – of a typically American-German nature -- which featured at the Richter concerts and his other concerts, in which Lena was teamed with Miss [Elizabeth] Hamlin, William J Winch and Emil Fischer.
The American connection found Lena Little plenty of work. She appeared with Miss Griswold, and with her old church-choir partner Orlando Harley, for S G Pratt, but most importantly she became an ally of another German-American artist, Georg Henschel, with ambitions both as a composer and an impresario. When Henschel mounted his London Symphony Concerts, Miss Little was there to sing Berlioz’s ‘La Captive’, an early Beethoven cantata and other such pieces. She also shared concerts in town and in country with Mr and Mrs Henschel, joining them in periodic performances of Henschel’s Serbisches Liederspiel.
She also performed several times with the young Bauer family (14 May), shared Lieder concerts with Liza Lehmann (26 April), sang for Oscar Beringer, Marie Wurm and Wilhelm Ganz, turned out for the Wagner Society, and in 1887 was engaged for the Norwich Festival (Giuditta in Mancinelli’s Isaiah, The Golden Legend).
1887 saw her also engaged at the St James’s Hall Popular Concerts (Wagner’s ‘Träume’, Massenet’s ‘Qu’importe l’hiver’) -- and the old criticism of excess vibrato resurfaced – which would become a regular employment, once she teamed with the Henschels and William Shakespeare to present, first, repeated performances of Brahms’ Gipsy Songs, and then the Liebeslieder Walzer and other popular German works.
When another German-American, Max Heinrich, turned up in London, Lena appeared frequently alongside him, and at his concerts, joining him in duets by Dvorak, Schumann, Cornelius et al.
Although she was heard largely in various combinations of German song, Miss Little did appear elsewhere. She repeated the Norwich Isaias at the Albert Hall (20 February 1889), sang Joachim’s Demetrius scena at the Crystal Palace with the composer, gave Parry’s Judith with the Bach choir, and several works of Goring Thomas, notably a new aria, from his Nadeshda, on a bill with Marcella Sembrich at St James’s Hall, as well as two duets with Heinrich at one of his concerts. In November 1889 she appeared with Heinrich and the Henschels in a run of Saturday and Monday pops with the inevitable Gipsy Songs, and four days later she boarded a ship for America.
Back in America, she sang with Walter Damrosch at the Metropolitan and visited New Orleans for the successful Saengerfest in February 1889, but by June she was back in England, for another round of Richter concerts (Alto Rhapsody, Rhinemaidens, Siegfried), an appearance with Heinrich at the Philharmonic Society (‘La Captive’), and a performance of Charles Braun’s Sigurd at Liverpool. In December she appeared in The Messiah at Bradford, at the concerts of Richard Gompertz and once more at the Pops, joining with the Henschels in the ‘Gipsy Songs’ and Liebeslieder Walzer. And this time when she left for America, it was for good.
When Miss Little gave her first concert, at New York’s Chickering Hall 5 March 1891, the press commented that, although Louisiana born and bred, her ‘artistic life has been spent in England’. Lena’s programme showed what she was all about: Schumann (‘Mit Myrthen und Rosen’), Schubert (‘Auf dem Wasser’), Brahms (‘Ruhe Süssliebchen’, ‘Vergebliche Standchen’), Secchi (‘Love me or not’), Gounod (‘Ruth’s Song’)., Liszt (‘Lucia’), trad ‘Charmante Marguerite’, Wagner (‘Träume’), D’Albert (‘Das Mädchen und der Schmetterling’), Rubinstein (‘Es blinkt der Thau’), Grieg (‘Zwei augen braun’), Hiller (‘Im Maien’). The press reported that the Secchi had gone down best, because it was in English and could be understood.
Lena sang the Verdi Requiem at Pittsburgh, took a little tour in support of Charles Santley, repeated her The Repentance of Nineveh and Israel in Egypt, along with Bruch’s Arminius at the Worcester, Mass, Festival, and gave a pair of concerts at New York’s Music Hall. She gave, this time, Tschaikowsky, Brahms, Wagner, Bach, Ries, Schumann, Bruch, Jensen and Secchi (not in English) and, this time, got a critic who understood what she was offering: ‘this artist prefers to interpret music to her audience instead of singing for the purpose of displaying her voice, and this being a rich contralto, excellently trained and under perfect control … Never sentimental… never verging on operatic or theatrical … intense and eloquent whenever this is required …’
From her home in Boston, she went out to the Chicago Exposition, the Cleveland Saengerfest, but, although she continued to appear in concert, she devoted herself more to teaching, and to private performances for local high-and-wealthy society. My last sightings of her as a public vocalist are in Brooklyn November 1907
My last sighting of her, altogether, in in 1920. She is listed at 1592 Peters Avenue, New Orleans in the local social register, and also in the census of the year. For some reason she left her high society nest in Boston and returned to her roots, in about 1908.
Plagued by ill health, she committed suicide by gas in 1920. She left a tidy sum, and a bequest of paintings to the local art gallery.
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