18 Facts About Lotte Lenya

Lotte Lenya played the murderous and sadistic Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love.

In 1922, Lenya was seen by her future husband, German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill, during an audition for his first stage score Zaubernacht, but because of his position behind the piano, she did not see him.

Lotte Lenya was cast, but owing to her loyalty to her voice coach, she declined the role.

Lotte Lenya accepted the part of Jenny in the first performance of The Threepenny Opera in 1928, and the part became her breakthrough role.

Lotte Lenya appeared on Broadway in Barefoot in Athens and married editor George Davis.

Lotte Lenya went on to record a number of songs from her time in Berlin, as well as songs from the American stage.

Sprechstimme was used in some famous songs in the Brecht-Weill plays, but now Lotte Lenya used it even more to compensate for the shortcomings of her voice.

Lotte Lenya was aware of this as a problem; in other contexts, she was very careful about fully respecting her late husband's score.

Lotte Lenya founded the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, to administer incomes and issues regarding rights, and to spread knowledge about Weill's work.

Lotte Lenya was present in the studio when Louis Armstrong recorded Brecht-Weill's "Mack the Knife".

In 1966, Lotte Lenya originated the role of Fraulein Schneider in the original Broadway cast of the musical Cabaret.

In 1979, two years before her death, Lotte Lenya was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Lotte Lenya went to Zurich to study in 1914, taking her first job at the Schauspielhaus, using the stage name Lotte Lenja.

Lotte Lenya was 26 years her junior and a heavy alcoholic, but she was widowed for a third time when Detwiler died at the age of 44 in 1969, falling from his studio window on their seventh wedding anniversary.

Lotte Lenya died in Manhattan of cancer in 1981, aged 83.

Lotte Lenya is buried next to Weill at Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw, New York.

Lotte Lenya is mentioned in the Fascinating Aida song "Lieder", which originally described her as German, but was corrected for later performances.

The Lotte Lenya Competition recognizes young singers and actors who are dramatically and musically convincing in repertoire ranging from opera and operetta to contemporary Broadway scores, with a focus on the works of Kurt Weill.