Pauline García-Viardot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pauline García-Viardot (July 18, 1821 – May 18, 1910) was a nineteenth century French mezzo-soprano and composer.
[edit] Early life
Pauline García was born in Paris to a glamorous Spanish opera family, the great Garcias. As a young woman, she was overshadowed by her beautiful older sister, Maria Malibran, the "Enchantress of Nations" but her father, Manuel del Popolo Vicente García, made Pauline his favorite and trained her on the piano and also gave her singing lessons. After his death in 1832, her mother took over. After her sister's death, Pauline was assigned to take over as a professional singer, nevermind the fact that she had a flawed, second-tier voice and subpar looks.
[edit] Singing career
In 1837, 16-year-old Pauline García gave her first concert performance in Brussels and in 1839, made her opera debut as Desdemona in Rossini’s Otello in London. This proved to be the surprise of the season. Despite her flaws, she had an exquisite technique combined with an astonishing degree of passion.
In 1840, she married Louis Viardot, an author and the director of the Théatre Italien in Paris, who would eventually manage her career. Twenty-one years her senior, her marriage did not stop the steady stream of infatuated men. Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev in particular was a gifted aristocrat that fell passionately in love with her ever since he listened to her rendition of The Barber of Seville in Russia in 1843. In 1845, he left Russia to follow Pauline and eventually installed himself into the Viardot household, treated her four children as his own and adored her until he died. She, in turn, critiqued his work and through her connections and social abilities, presented him in the best light whenever they were in public. Other famous conquests included composers Charles Gounod and Hector Berlioz.
Renowned for her wide range and her dramatic roles on stage, Viardot's performances inspired composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Giacomo Meyerbeer, for whom she created Fidès in Le prophète. While she never considered herself a composer, she in fact composed three music collections and also assisted with the writing of music for the roles that were created specifically for her. Later in life, after retiring from the stage, she wrote an opera titled Le dernier sorcier.
She spoke fluent French, Italian , Spanish, English, German and Russian, and composed songs in a variety of national techniques. Her career took her to the best music halls across Europe, and from 1843 to 1846 she was permanently attached to the Opera in St. Petersburg, Russia. Such was her popularity that writer George Sand made her into the heroine of her 1843 novel "Consuelo."
A notable remark of hers was made to the English soprano Adelaide Kemble when they attended the late concert in London by the gerat Italian soprano Giuditta Pasta, who was clearly past her prime. Asked by Kemble what she thought of the voice she replied 'Ah! It is a ruin, but then so is Leonardo's Last Supper'.
In 1863, Pauline Viardot-García retired from the stage. She and her family left France due to her husband’s public opposition to Emperor Napoleon III and settled in Baden-Baden, Germany. After the fall of Napoleon III, they returned to France, where she taught at the Paris Conservatory and, until the time of her husband’s passing in 1883, also presided over a music salon in the Boulevard Saint-Germain.
In 1910, Pauline Viardot passed away at age eighty-nine surrounded by a loving family. Her body is interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris, France.
The Villa Viardot in Bougival, near Paris, a gift to the Viardots by Ivan Turgenev in 1874, where so many musicians, painters and poets came, has been restored since 2001, thanks to the actions of the Georges Bizet Association and Patrimoine et Urbanisme. The famous baritone Jorge Chaminé frequently gives master classes there.
[edit] Appearance
Shockingly enough, Pauline's appearance, or lack thereof, apparently had no effect on her famed popularity with the masses and men in particular. She was widely pronounced as "strikingly ugly" or "atrociously homely," with dark and crude features, hooded eyes, a receding chin, a wide mouth with a heavy underlip and an H-shaped figure in a time when Italy adored beauty.
Nevertheless, it appeared as though Pauline's other talents more than made up for these shortcomings. Her ability to sing in a way that "made people forget her looks" was laced with a haunting voice critics compared to "amber flowing over velvet." Her astute choice of dress, quick conversation and artistic abilities further distinguished her from other regular singers, or women for that matter.
In fact, one of her sketches is a self-portrait in which her physical irregularities are softened and altered into a resemblance of beauty. Turgenev himself drew her fictional likeness in Spring Torrents as a blond, grey-eyed bombshell and before he died, he looked at his pictures of her in his room and cried our "What marvelous features."
