Sieglinde in Santa Barbara: in the late 1940s, Lotte Lehmann, the greatest Sieglinde of her day, took up residence at Santa Barbara's Music Academy of the West. There she reigned for years as a committed--and often volatile--teacher.(Biography)

After her legendary farewell recital at Town Hall on February 16, 1951, Lotte Lehmann retired from singing. California beckoned her, as she had fallen in love with Santa Barbara on her first visit in 1932. She and her husband, Otto Krause (who died in 1939), had spent a beautiful Christmas there, and Lehmann immediately saw it as the perfect setting for her retirement years. "When I have made my first million dollars," she said, "I will buy myself a house here." She did exactly that in 1940; in 1951, she found herself working in Miraflores, also in Santa Barbara, the new home of the Music Academy of the West. Lehmann had envisioned this as an American Salzburg when she ...