Composer of the Week: Pauline Viardot and Her Circle

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Kate Molleson

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Pauline Viardot and her Circle

Composer of the Week: Pauline Viardot and Her Circle: The García Clan

The García Clan

Pauline Viardot and Her Circle

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Pauline Viardot and Her Circle, The García Clan

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of multi-talented musician Pauline Viardot.

Donald Macleod explores the life of 19th-century French singer, pianist and composer, Pauline Viardot. Today, her training as a member of the García family of singers.

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of the 19th-century French singer, pianist, composer and influential society figure, Pauline Viardot. Today he looks at her early training as a member of the Garcías, a family of singers, originally from Spain. 

“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.  

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-Saëns, 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. 


Les filles de Cadix   
Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo-soprano 
Myung-Whun Chung, piano 

Scène d’Hermione (Andromaque)  
Act IV: Je ne t’ai point (pas), Cruel? 
Györgyi Dombrádi, mezzo-soprano 
Lambert Bumiller, piano 

Manuel Garcia Snr: La figlia dell’aria: È non lo vedo…. Son regina
Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo-soprano 
International Chamber Vocalists 
Zurich La Scintilla Orchestra 
Ádám Fischer, conductor 

Liszt: El Contrabandista - Rondo Fantastique sur Un Thème Espagnol, S.252
Valentina Lisitsa, piano  

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia  (Act 2) 
Don Basilio! Cosa veggo? …… briconi, birbanti 
Hermann Prey, baritone, Figaro 
Teresa Berganza, mezzo-soprano, Rosina 
Luigi Alva, tenor, Count Almaviva 
Enzo Dara, bass, Dr Bartolo 
Paolo Montarsolo, bass, Don Basilio 
London Symphony Orchestra
Claudio Abbado, conductor

Rossini: Otello  (Act 3, Sc 1) 
Canzone del Salice: Assisa a pie d'un salice  
Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano, Desdemona 
Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Edoardo Müller, conductor

Producer: Johannah Smith

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of 19th-century French singer, pianist, composer and influential society figure, Pauline Viardot (1821-1910).

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