In Bayreuth, Lehmann performed the soprano solo in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at the concert celebrating the laying of the foundation stone of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1872, alongside Johanna Jachmann-Wagner, Albert Niemann and Franz Betz, with Wagner conducting.[2] She created two roles, Wellgunde the Rhinemaiden and Waltraute the Valkyrie, in the first complete performance of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen[2] at the inaugural Bayreuth Festival from 13 to 17 August 1876. The other two Rhinemaidens were her sister Lilli and Minna Lammert.[1][3] They performed "swimming" in an apparatus imagined by Wagner. After the opening scene was first tried, stage assistant Richard Fricke wrote in his diary that Wagner "thanked them with tears of joy".[4] Lehmann sang again in Bayreuth in 1896, as the Second Norne in Götterdämmerung.[2]
After her retirement, Lehmann lived in Berlin, where she died aged 80. Her daughter, Hedwig Helbig (1869–1951), became a concert soprano and an assistant to Lilli Lehmann.[1]