Pauline Viardot-Garcia

Synopsis

Today we pay tribute to Pauline Viardot-Garcia, born in Paris on today’s date in 1821. Her father was Manuel Garcia, the tenor for whom Rossini had written the role of Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville. Her older sister was legendary operatic diva Maria Malibran, a famous interpreter of operas by Bellini and Donizetti.

Little Pauline wanted to be a piano virtuoso and took lessons from Liszt, but at 15, her mother decided she, too, should become a singer. Chopin adored her voice, and together they arranged some of his mazurkas as songs. Meyerbeer and Gounod wrote operatic roles for her.

In 1860, with the composer at the piano croaking out the tenor part of Tristan, Viardot-Garcia sang the role of Isolde at the first private reading of music from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, and it was she who gave the premiere performance of Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody in 1870.

She married Louis Viardot, the director of the Theatre Italien in Paris, and at their home one was just as likely to meet Charles Dickens or Henry James as Berlioz or Tchaikovsky. She was also a composer of songs and chamber operas, which are receiving renewed attention.

Music Played in Today's Program

Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821-1910): 12 Poems by Pushkin, Fet and Turgenev: No. 12: Les Étoiles; Laetitia Grimaldi, soprano; Ammiel Bushakevitz, piano; Bis 2546

On This Day

Births

• 1670 - Italian opera composer Giovanni Bononcini, in Modena. In 1720 he joined the Royal Academy of Music in London, where one faction favored Bononcini’s works over those by Handel.

• 1821 - French composer and mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot-Garcia. She arranged some of Chopin’s mazurkas as songs and performed them with the composer in concert. She also wrote an opera, La Derniére Sorcière, that was performed in Weimar in 1869, and a chamber opera version of Cendrillon (Cinderella) which was performed privately in 1904.

• 1872 - Czech composer Julius Fucik, in Prague. A student of Dvořák’s, he composed the famous circus march, Entrance of the Gladiators.

• 1894 - Dutch-born American composer Bernard Wagenaar, in Arnhem; He was the son of the Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar (1862-1941). He came to the U.S. in 1920, was a violinist with the New York Philharmonic from 1921-23, and in 1927 became a composition teacher at the Juilliard Graduate School.

• 1933 - Canadian composer R. Murray Schafrer, in Sarnia, Ontario

• 1954 - American composer Tobias Picker, in New York

Deaths

• 1949 - Czech composer Vitezslav Novák, 78, in Skutec, Slovakia

Premieres

• 1713 - Handel: Utrecht Te Deum, in London (Julian date: July 7)

• 1791 - Cherubini: opera, Lodoiska, in Paris

• 1920 - Miaskovsky: Symphony No. 5, in Moscow

• 1972 - Panufnik: Violin Concerto, in London, with Yehudi Menuhin as soloist

• 1976 - Stockhausen: multi-media work Sirius, in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian Institute

• 1984 - Sallinen: String Quartet No. 5 (Pieces of Mosaic), at the Kuhmo Festival in Finland, by the Kronos Quartet