The Viennese Pope of Critics Julius Korngold called Lilli Lehmann the "Cosima of Salzburg" in reference to the dominant role of Richard Wagner's widow in Bayreuth. A thoroughly accurate description of the dominant role the singer played in the city's musical life in the first two decades of the 20th century. Because of her services to the building of the Mozarteum, the Salzburg music festivals and the acquisition of Mozart's birthplace by the International Mozarteum Foundation, Lilli Lehmann was celebrated by Salzburg contemporaries as the sun "around which the planets are grouped."