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Updated: June 12, 2025
Chopin's obsequies took place at the Madeleine Church, and Lablache sang on this occasion the same passage, the "Tuba Mirum" of Mozart's Requiem Mass, which he had sung at the funeral of Beethoven in 1827; while the other solos were given by Mme. Viardot Garcia and Mme. Castellan. He lies in Père Lachaise, beside Cherubini and Bellini.
And lastly, Countess Lowenthal, the wife of the Austrian military plenipotentiary, gave a great matinee, at which Mme. Viardot sang various items from Tannhauser, for which she received five hundred francs. By some singular coincidence people managed to confound my fate with that of a certain M. de la Vaquerie, who had also made a dismal failure with a drama, Les Funerailles de l'Honeur.
Viardot, by her genius completely revolutionized, both in dramatic conception and musical rendering, many parts which had almost become stage traditions in passing through the hands of a series of fine artists. But the fresher insight of a vital originating imagination breathed a more robust and subtile life into old forms, and the models thus set appear to be imperishable.
Nevertheless, about the same time, Liszt complained that a perfect training of the voice such as he admired in Viardot Garcia, had almost become a legend of the past; and only eight years ago, an excellent German critic, Martin Plüddemann, wrote that "Germany has many good orchestras and not a few excellent pianists, even among amateurs; but a city of 100,000 inhabitants seldom has ten vocalists whose voices are tolerable, and of these two or three at most deserve the name of artists."
It is rather tawny in color, as if it had been painted on a pine board and the wood had asserted itself from below. It is a charming picture, with all the great Roman's inevitable perfection of design; but it is incomprehensible that critics, M. Viardot among them, should call it the first in rank of Raphael's Virgins in Glory.
His happiness burst forth in lyric forms. He wrote the amazing number of one hundred and thirty-eight songs, among which the more famous are the set entitled "Myrtles," the cycles of song from Heine, dedicated to Pauline Viardot, Chamisso's "Woman's Love and Life," and Heine's "Poet Love."
I was twenty when M. and Mme. Viardot introduced me to Rossini. He invited me to his small evening receptions and received me with his usual rather meaningless cordiality. At the end of a month, when he found that I asked to be heard neither as a pianist nor as a composer, he changed his attitude. "Come and see me tomorrow morning," he said. "We can talk then."
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.
The season is getting so late mama thinks we ought to leave London, especially as Garcia is taking his vacation, and we are going in a few days to Paris. He wrote: "I send you my pupil. Do all you can to persuade her to go on the stage. She has it in her." But Madame Viardot may "do all she can"; I will never go on the stage. If "it" is in me, it must work out some other way. PARIS, May, 1861.
Do you remember the editors, the theatrical managers, the readers and the public when you are running about the country! As for me, I forget everything as I do when Pauline Viardot is singing.
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