(1821 – 1910) The famous mezzo. composer. composer’s muse, and genius. She spoke six languages fluently – and that was before she was six
Born Pauline Garcia Sitches, the last her mother’s name, in Paris, her family was already famous. Both her parents were opera singers. Her father was one of Rossini’s favorite tenors; her mother so famous she had a nickname and her 13-years-older sister also, the famed La Malibran. Between them they created some of the most famous roles of the 19 century and even carried Mozart to the States with the American premiere of Don Giovanni. So little Pauline was travelling with them all between Paris, London Rome and New York from the age of four.
So she really didn’t have any choice about becoming an opera singer – especially after her father and then her famous sister died when she was still in her teens. Reviews of her London debut raved about her beauty and passion and the greatest composers in France created roles for her – Berlioz, and Meyerbeer, and Massenet and Saint-Saëns. She gave the premiere of Brahms’s Alto Rhapsody.
All the more astonishing because she was an even finer pianist – had studied with Liszt – and was one of Frederic Chopin’s closest friends. She was always his favorite duet partner. Later, she taught at the Conservatoire and held a famous salon at her house on the Boulevard St Germain - by that time married, very happily, to a much older man who devoted himself to the support of her brilliant career. Amusingly, this did not stop the steady stream of infatuated admirers – Berlioz among them, and especially Turgenev, the Russian novelist, who actually installed himself in their house treated her children as his own and adored her until she died.
And when she did, at the age of 88, she left behind a considerable oeuvre because this astonishing woman had also been composing this whole time. Five operas, piano pieces, chamber music and songs. “The world”, as Franz Liszt once said, “has finally found a woman composer of genius”
Pauline Garcia Viardot (1821 – 1910)
MUSIC: Hai Luli Cecilia Bartoli, Myung Whun Chung
Presented by Anna Clyne
Written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
