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Updated: June 12, 2025
I have met Madame Viardot whom I found a very curious temperament. It was Tourgueneff who took me to her house. CCXVII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, at Croissset Nohant, from the 28 to the 29 February 1872. Night of Wednesday to Thursday, three o'clock in the morning. Ah! my dear old friend, what a dreadful twelve days I have spent! Maurice has been very ill.
You ask me what I am doing now: I have done, since I left Paris, an article on Mademoiselle de Flaugergues, which will appear in l'Opinion nationale with a work by her; an article for le Temps on Victor Hugo, Bouilhet, Leconte de Lisle and Pauline Viardot.
Viardot create a stronger feeling than when she appeared in Berlin in the spring of 1847 as Rachel in Halévy's "La Juive."
They do not understand the poet who sings, "O rus, quando te aspiciam!" They do not appreciate the great distinction of simplicity. Reber's muse is not for them. Madame Viardot was as learned a musician as any one could be and she was among the first subscribers to the complete edition of Sebastian Bach's works. We know what an astounding revelation that work was.
His first decided encouragement came in 1851, when "Sappho" was produced at the French Opera through the influence of Madame Pauline Viardot, the sister of Malibran, who had a generous belief in the composer's future, and such a position in the musical world of Paris as to make her requests almost mandatory.
These were attended by many titled personages. Viardot Garcia sang. The composer was thin, pale, and played with "wasted fingers," but the money helped replenish his depleted purse. Chopin visited Scotland in August of the same year, and stayed with his pupil Miss Jane Stirling, to whom he dedicated the two Nocturnes, Op. 55.
The next novel, "Smoke," despite its extraordinary brilliancy, is in many ways unworthy of Turgenev's genius. It was written at Baden, while he was living with the Viardots, and I suspect that the influence of Madame Viardot is stronger in this work than in anything else Turgenev produced.
As for the threat of whippings, that must be relegated to the realm of legends with the one that Garcia punished his daughters to make them learn to sing. Madame Viardot expressly told me that neither she nor her sister was abused by their father and that they learned music without realizing it, just as they learned to talk.
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.
I have waited to speak of him until the time when the Académie was ready to replace him, that is to say, put some one in his place, for great artists are never replaced. Others succeed them with their own individual and different powers, but they do not take their places nevertheless. Malibran has never been replaced, nor Madame Viardot, Madame Carvalho, Talma and Rachel.
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