A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Viardot, Pauline
VIARDOT, PAULINE,
One of the most celebrated vocalists of the day, is altogether musical in her family relations: her father was the great tenor Emmanuel Garcia, her sister Madame Malabran, and her brother Manuel Garcia, professor of singing at the Conservatoire in Paris, while her mother, formerly Joquina Stiches, had won laurels on the stage of Madrid, under the name of Brian's. Pauline Garcia was born at Paris, on the 18th. of July, 1821. She appears to have been quite an infant prodigy, for we are told that when only four years of age she spoke, in her childish way, four languages, and three years later was capable of playing the piano-forte accompaniments for her father's pupils. It does not appear that Pauline Garcia profited much by her musical connexions; her father died in 1832, before her voice was fixed; her sister was constantly absent fulfilling her various engagements, so that the had only an opportunity of witnessing her performance twice; and her brother residing in Paris, while she was at Brussels, where, when the family had returned from their travels, first to England and then to New York and Mexico, it was decided she should remain to complete her education. Her youthful studies, it seems, comprehended most branches of the arts, and for a while she devoted as much attention to drawing and painting as to music and singing. In consequence of her great manual dexterity, it was thought that she would shine most as a pianist; she was therefore placed under Liszt, and became one of his most accomplished pupils; but as her vocal powers developed themselves, the design of devoting her to this line of musical art was abandoned. In April, 1840, Mdlle. Garcia married M. Louis Viardot, director of the Italian Opera in Paris; she had the year previous made her English débût at the London Opera House in the character of Desdemona, and the year after her marriage she appeared again upon that stage, singing with Mano, and giving evidence of dramatic power of the highest order. Her voice, like that of her sister Malabran, combines the two requisites of soprano and contralto, and embraces a compass of three octaves; it is pure and mellow, remarkable not so much for power as for wonderful flexibility. Her performance of Julia, in "Le Prophet," is considered by many critics to be the finest impersonification of of passion and pathos to be met with on the lyric stage of the present day. For their thrilling effect her Spanish songs are equal to the Swedish melodies of Jenny Lind. Her name is associated with the first performance of "Les Huguenots," in which she took the part of Valentine, as well as with the "Splagenia" and "La Juive," and many other of the operatic master-pieces in which she has appeared on the Spanish, German, French, and English stages.