Donald Macleod explores how Pauline Viardot's career was assisted by the support of two influential figures, the poet Alfred de Musset and the novelist George Sand.
“When I want to do something, I do it in spite of water, fire, society, the whole world,” an indicator, if ever there was one, of the inner steel of this week’s composer, 19th-century French singer, pianist, composer and influential society figure, Pauline Viardot.
Born in 1821, Pauline Viardot possessed an array of exceptional qualities. As one of the opera stars of her age, she was admired from Paris to St Petersburg as a sublime interpreter of Rossini, Bellini, Handel and Gluck. Beyond her incomparable voice, her twice-weekly artistic salons were a high point in Parisian cultural life. She knew, and was admired by Chopin, George Sand, Delacroix, Liszt, Fauré, Tchaikovsky, and Saint-Saëns to name but a few. While having, according to Saint-Saens, an unnecessarily modest view of her talent, she was also an accomplished composer. A talented linguist with five languages at her command, her compositions include a substantial body of songs, one or two instrumental works and a series of highly appealing operettas.
Across the week, Donald Macleod will be exploring different facets of her extraordinary life. We’ll be hearing from a range of Viardot’s compositions as well as some of the operatic roles she made famous. He’ll be examining her role in Parisian cultural circles, and her friendships with leading writers among them Charles Dickens, and in particular Ivan Turgenev, and composers such as Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Meyerbeer and Gounod, all of whom created roles specifically for her incredible voice.
Madrid
György Dombrádi, mezzo-soprano
Lambert Bumiller, piano
Hai luli
Olena Tokar, soprano
Igor Gryshyn, piano
Six Morçeaux
1 Romance
II Bohèmienne
III: Berçeuse
Reto Kuppel, violin
Wolfgang Manz, piano
Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Act 2)
Ah! qual colpo inaspettato!
Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo-soprano, Rosina
Leo Nucci, baritone, Figaro
William Matteuzzi, tenor, Almaviva
Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna
Giuseppe Patanè, conductor
Plainte d’amour (Mazurka in F sharp minor, op 6 no 1)
Urszula Kryger, mezzo-soprano
Charles Spencer, piano
L’Oiselet (Mazurka op 68, no 2)
Sophie Karthäuser, soprano
Eugene Asti, piano
La Séparation (Mazurka no 14 in G minor op 24, no 1)
Ina Kancheva, soprano
Kamelia Kader, mezzo-soprano
Ludmil Angelov, piano
Rossini: La Cenerentola – Overture
South West German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Baden-Baden
Alberto Zedda, conductor
3 Mörike Songs
no 1. In der Frühe
no 2. Nixe Binsefuss
Catriona Morison, mezzo-soprano
Simon Lepper, piano Show less