1821–1910 · France · Romantic
Pauline Viardot (1821–1910) was a French singer, voice teacher and composer of Spanish descent, the daughter and student of the singer Manuel García. Among the composers her singing inspired were Chopin, Berlioz, Saint-Saëns and Meyerbeer, whose "Le prophète" gave her the role of Fidès, which she created. The site holds 16 of her songs for voice and piano, from upper-intermediate to advanced level.
Pauline Viardot was born in Paris on 18 July 1821. At birth she was registered as Michelle Ferdinande Pauline García Sitches. Her father, the Spanish singer and teacher Manuel García, was also her singing teacher; her mother, the Spanish soprano Joaquina Sitches, also belonged to the opera stage. Pauline's elder sister was the singer Maria Malibran, and her brother was Manuel Patricio García. In childhood she and her family made trips to London, New York and Mexico City; it was in Mexico City that her musical career began. Among her listed occupations, Viardot appears not only as a singer, composer and voice teacher, but also as a pianist. At sixteen, Pauline gave her first concert in Brussels, and two years later she appeared in London as Desdemona in Rossini's Otello. That appearance became the main event of the season: critics of the time noted that, despite some flaws, her voice combined refined technique with remarkable passion. As a child she took piano lessons from the young Franz Liszt. She also performed in other theatres across Europe, with numerous concert programmes.
Louis Viardot and Pauline were introduced by George Sand. In 1840 Pauline became the wife of Louis Viardot, who headed the Théâtre Italien in Paris and was 21 years older than her. After the wedding he took charge of her career. This marriage produced daughters Louise-Pauline (1841–1918), Claudie (1852–1914) and Marianne (1854–1919), and in 1857 a son, Paul (1857–1941).
In 1844, in Saint Petersburg, Antonio Tamburini and Giovanni Battista Rubini appeared on the same stage as Viardot. In Russia she also sang in 1845, 1846 and 1853. From 1843 to 1846 she was attached to the Opera in Saint Petersburg.
Viardot had no shortage of admirers. The Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, her close friend, heard her in Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville and fell in love with her in 1843. In 1845 he followed her out of Russia and became almost a member of the Viardot household: he regarded her four children as if they were his own, staying attached to her for the rest of his life. Viardot herself assessed his literary work, and her social standing showed him in a favourable light. What truly connected Turgenev and Viardot remains a matter of debate even now. Among Viardot's other acquaintances were Charles Gounod and Hector Berlioz. Louis Viardot translated Turgenev's works into French, and together with her husband Pauline introduced Europe to the achievements of Russian culture.
Viardot was known for the roles of Fidès in Meyerbeer's Le prophète, Orphée in Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice, and Rosine in Rossini's The Barber of Seville. Her singing inspired composers, among them Frédéric Chopin, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns and Meyerbeer himself, in whose opera she created the role of Fidès. She sang on the leading stages of Europe. Viardot spoke Russian, German, English, Italian, French and Spanish fluently, and used a variety of national styles in her own compositions. Her Russian diction was clean enough that listeners assumed she had grown up speaking the language.
Viardot herself did not consider herself a composer, yet she wrote three collections of her own compositions and comic operas to librettos by Turgenev, and also helped compose music for roles that were created specially for her. She turned some of Frédéric Chopin's mazurkas into songs; he backed the idea and even lent a hand with it. She likewise turned into songs instrumental pieces originally written by Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert and Joseph Haydn. She wrote most of her compositions after leaving the stage, in Baden-Baden. Having left the stage, she wrote an opera called The Last Sorcerer. At Chopin's funeral on 30 October 1849 she sang the mezzo-soprano part in the Tuba Mirum of Mozart's Requiem.
Viardot left the operatic stage in 1863. Together with her family she left France — her husband Louis Viardot opposed the regime of Napoleon III — and they settled in Baden-Baden. In 1870, at the request of Johannes Brahms, she sang his Alto Rhapsody at its first public performance, in Jena. Once Napoleon III's rule collapsed later that same year, the Viardots went back to France. In 1873, at the Odéon in Paris, she sang when Jules Massenet's oratorio Marie-Magdeleine was given its first performance. In 1874 Ivan Turgenev bought a house with a park for Viardot in Bougival, near Paris. She taught at the Paris Conservatory until 1883, when her husband died. On the Boulevard Saint-Germain she received guests in her own music salon, and among her pupils were Désirée Artôt and Sophie Röhr-Brandin. Viardot died in 1910 surrounded by relatives; she was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.
Pauline Viardot was a singer and a voice teacher. The site holds sixteen of her songs for voice and piano: five at upper-intermediate level and eleven at advanced level. None of them is a solo piano piece. According to various figures, Viardot wrote more than 250 musical compositions in all — the site presents only a small part of them. In 1843 her collection «Album de Mme Viardot-Garcia» was published — eight pieces for voice and piano. In 1866 twelve of her songs on poems by the Russian poets Fet, Pushkin, Turgenev, Lermontov and Koltsov were published. In 1904 she composed the opera «Cendrillon» to her own libretto. In 1848 she wrote the cantata «La Jeune République» for voice, mixed choir and piano. Among her choral works is «Chœur bohémien», for voice, three women's voices and piano. In 1873, fifty of her arrangements of Franz Schubert's melodies were published, with the texts translated into French.
At upper-intermediate level: «À la Fontaine», «La main», «J’en mourrai», «Gentilles hirondelles» and «Chanson mélancolique» — on the site, these five songs are the most accessible by level among her works.
At advanced level: «Havanaise», «Bonjour mon cœur!», «Désespoir», «Hai Luli !», «Le chêne et le roseau», «Le rêve de Jésus», «Les filles de Cadix», «Madrid», «Rossignol, rossignolet», «Scène d'Hermione» and «Sérénade à Rosine» — these eleven songs make up most of her work on the site. Viardot published the songs «Hai Luli !» and «Havanaise» in 1880; the French lyrics for «Havanaise» were written by Louis Pomey.
The site suggests starting with four upper-intermediate songs — «À la Fontaine», «La main», «J’en mourrai» and «Gentilles hirondelles» — and then moving on to the advanced song «Havanaise». The order follows rising level, from upper-intermediate to advanced. The songs' titles are given on the site in French.