Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 12, 2025
This riot took place on the 21st of April, and on the 2d of May Paula alludes to a performance at the opera-house, which Ludo and I attended. It was the last appearance of Fran Viardot Garcia as Iphigenia, but I fear Paula is right in saying that the great singer did her best for an ungrateful public, for the attention of the audience was directed chiefly to the king and queen.
M. Viardot occupies this Hôtel, and with pleasure shows it to strangers; he keeps an academy and has written a history of the edifice, which may be had of the porter. It was at the corner of this street that the Constable de Clisson was assailed and severely wounded by 20 ruffians, headed by Pierre de Graon, Chamberlain of the Duke of Orleans, who was murdered by the Duke of Burgundy.
Of another of Chopin's private performances in the spring of 1848 we read in the Supplement du Dictionnaire de la Conversation, where Fiorentino writes: We were at most ten or twelve in a homely, comfortable little salon, equally propitious to conversation and contemplation. Chopin took the place of Madame Viardot at the piano, and plunged us into ineffable raptures.
Alboni's Paris engagement, in the spring of 1850, was marked by a daring step on her part, which excited much curiosity at the time, and might easily have ended in a most humiliating reverse, though its outcome proved fortunate, that undertaking being the rôle of Fides in "Le Prophète," which had become so completely identified with the name of Viardot.
Alexander Dumas was one of the many celebrities who lived there at one time or other; and Chopin had for neighbours the famous singer Pauline Viardot- Garcia, the distinguished pianoforte-professor Zimmermann, and the sculptor Dantan, from whose famous gallery of caricatures, or rather charges, the composer's portrait was not absent.
After this temporary rupture with Buloz, Madame Sand's services were largely appropriated by the Revue Indépendante, a new journal founded in 1840 by her friends Pierre Leroux and Louis Viardot, in conjunction with whose names hers appears on the title page as leading contributor.
Fickle Paris had forgotten Pasta, Malibran, and even Mme. Viardot, who was then in the very flush of her splendid powers. From Paris Mlle. Cruvelli went to London, where she sang an engagement at the Royal Italian Opera, making her opening appearance as Desdemona, in the same cast with Tamburini and Ronconi. Her terms during the season were two hundred and fifty pounds a night. Mlle.
Then Arátoff got Púshkin and read Tatyána's letter and again felt convinced that that "gipsy" had not in the least grasped the meaning of the letter. But there was that jester Kupfer shouting: "A Rachel! A Viardot!"
Alboni's achievement was gratifying to her pride, but it need not be said that her interpretation of Fides was radically different from that of Mme. Viardot, which was a grand tragic conception, akin to those created by the genius of Pasta and Schröder-Devrient.
She was not the equal of her sister as a musician and could not have survived the decline of her voice as the latter did. Madame Viardot was not beautiful, indeed, she was far from it. The portrait by Ary Scheffer is the only one which shows this unequalled woman truthfully and gives some idea of her strange and powerful fascination.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking