Viardot-Garcia P. (1821-1910), singer

Categories / Art/Music, Theatre/Personalia
VIARDOT-GARCIA Michel Pauline Fernanda (1821-1910), French singer (mezzo-soprano) of Spanish origin, pedagogue, composer. Daughter and pupil of M. Garcia, also took lessons from F. Liszt (pianoforte) and other composers. In 1839, she made her opera debut in G. Rossini's Othello at the Theatre Italien in Paris, after which she embarked on a career as a soloist. In St. Petersburg she performed at the Imperial Italian Opera in 1843-46 and in 1853, singing the principal roles in Rossini's operas The Barber of Seville, Othello, and Cinderella; V. Bellini's La sonnambula, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Norma; G. Donizetti's Lucie de Lammermoor, La favorite, L'elisir d'amore, Don Pasquale; G. Meyerbeers's Le Prophete; Mozart's Don Juan; O. K. Nikolai's Il Templario, and others. Having learned Russian, she performed romances by A. A. Alyabyev, A. N. Verstovsky, A. S. Dargomyzhsky at the salons of the Vielgorskys, А. F. Lvov, and others. It was on the St. Petersburg stage that Ivan Turgenev first saw Viardot-Garcia, and later immortalized her artistic talent in the prose poem Hold on! Pauline cultivated her Russian ties and retained her interest in Russian culture even after she left, composing romances to poems by Alexander Pushkin, М. Y. Lermontov, and А. А. Fet, and an opera comique to librettos by Turgenev, and performed musical pieces by Peter Tchaikovsky, whom she was also acquainted with. Viardot-Garcia 's daughter Louise Pauline Marie Heritte-Viardot (1841-1919) taught voice at the Petersburg Conservatory in 1868-70. In 1843, Pauline lived at 54 Nevsky Prospect (at the corner of Malaya Sadovaya Street).

References: Розанов А. С. Полина Виардо-Гарсиа. 2-е изд., доп. Л., 1973. L. M. Zolotnitskaya, A.L. Porfiryeva. Viardot-Garcia Michele Pauline Fernanda
Malaya Sadovaya St./Saint Petersburg, city
Nevsky prospect/Saint Petersburg, city, house 54
Розанов А. С. Полина Виардо-Гарсиа. 2-е изд., доп. Л., 1973 Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory
1843