#paris conservatory

From Musical Memories by Camille Saint-Saëns:

Alfred de Musset covered Maria Malibran’s tomb with immortal flowers and he also told us the story of Pauline Garcia’s debut. There is also something about it in Théophile Gautier’s writings. It is clear from both accounts that her first appearance was an extraordinary occasion. Natures such as hers reveal themselves at once to those who know and do not have to wait to arrive until they are in full bloom. Pauline was very young at the time, and soon afterwards she married M. Viardot, manager of the Théâtre-Italien and one of the finest men of his day. She went abroad to develop her talent, but she returned in 1849 when Meyerbeer named her to create the rôle of Fides in Le Prophète.

Her voice was tremendously powerful, prodigious in its range, and it overcame all the difficulties in the art of singing. But this marvellous voice did not please everyone, for it was by no means smooth and velvety. Indeed, it was a little harsh and was likened to the taste of a bitter orange. But it was just the voice for a tragedy or an epic, for it was superhuman rather than human. Light things like Spanish songs and Chopin mazurkas, which she used to transpose so that she could sing them, were completely transformed by that voice and became the playthings of an Amazon or of a giantess. She lent an incomparable grandeur to tragic parts and to the severe dignity of the oratorio.

I never had the pleasure of hearing Madame Malibran, but Rossini told me about her. He preferred her sister. Madame Malibran, he said, had the advantage of beauty. In addition, she died young and left a memory of an artist in full possession of all her powers. 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. What made her even more captivating than her talent as a singer was her personality—one of the most amazing I have ever known. She spoke and wrote fluently Spanish, French, Italian, English and German. She was in touch with all the current literature of these countries and in correspondence with people all over Europe.

She did not remember when she learned music. In the Garcia family music was in the air they breathed. So she protested against the tradition which represented her father as a tyrant who whipped his daughters to make them sing. I have no idea how she learned the secrets of composition, but save for the management of the orchestra she knew them well. She wrote numerous lieder on Spanish and German texts and all of these show a faultless diction. But contrary to the custom of most composers who like nothing better than to show their compositions, she concealed hers as though they were indiscretions. It was exceedingly difficult to persuade her to let one hear them, although the least were highly creditable. Once she sang a Spanish popular song, a wild haunting thing, with which Rubinstein fell madly in love. It was several years before she would admit that she wrote it herself.

She wrote brilliant operettas in collaboration with Tourguenief, but they were never published and were performed only in private. One anecdote will show her versatility as a composer. She was a friend of Chopin and Liszt and her tastes were strongly futuristic. M. Viardot, on the contrary, was a reactionary in music. He even found Beethoven too advanced. One day they had a guest who was also a reactionary. Madame Viardot sang to them a wonderful work with recitative, aria and final allegro, which they praised to the skies. She had written it expressly for the occasion. I have read this work and even the cleverest would have been deceived.

But it must not be thought from this that her compositions were mere imitations. On the contrary they were extremely original. The only explanation why those that were published have remained unknown and why so many were unpublished is that this admirable artist had a horror of publicity. She spent half her life in teaching pupils and the world knew nothing about it.

During the Empire the Viardots used to give in their apartment on Thursday evenings really fine musical festivals which my surviving contemporaries still remember. From the salon in which the famous portrait by Ary Scheffer was hung and which was devoted to ordinary instrumental and vocal music, we went down a short staircase to a gallery filled with valuable paintings, and finally to an exquisite organ, one of Cavaillé-Coll’s masterpieces. In this temple dedicated to music we listened to arias from the oratorios of Handel and Mendelssohn. She had sung them in London, but could not get a hearing for them in the concerts in Paris as they were averse to such vast compositions. I had the honor to be her regular accompanist both at the organ and the piano.

But this passionate lover of song was an all-round musician. She played the piano admirably, and when she was among friends she overcame the greatest difficulties. Before her Thursday audiences, however, she limited herself to chamber music, with a special preference for Henri Reber’s duets for the piano and the violin. These delicate, artistic works are unknown to the amateurs of to-day. They seem to prefer to the pure juice of the grape in crystal glasses poisonous potions in cups of gold. They must have orgies, sumptuous ceilings, a deadly luxury. 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. Each year brought ten religious cantatas, and each year brought us new surprises in the unexpected variety and impressiveness of the work. We thought we had known Sebastian Bach, but now we learned how really to know him. We found him a writer of unusual versatility and a great poet. His Wohltemperirte Klavier had given us only a hint of all this. The beauties of this famous work needed exposition for, in the absence of definite instructions, opinions differed. In the cantatas the meaning of the words serves as an indication and through the analogy between the forms of expression, it is easy to see pretty clearly what the author intended in his Klavier pieces.

One fine day the annual volume was found to contain a cantata in several parts written for a contralto solo accompanied by stringed instruments, oboes and an organ obligato. The organ was there and the organist as well. So we assembled the instruments, Stockhausen, the baritone, was made the leader of the little orchestra, and Madame Viardot sang the cantata. I suspect that the author had never heard his work sung in any such manner. I cherish the memory of that day as one of the most precious in my musical career. My mother and M. Viardot were the only listeners to this exceptional exhibition. We did not dare to repeat it before hearers who were not ready for it. What would now be a great success would have fallen flat at that time. And nothing is more irritating than to see an audience cold before a beautiful work. It is far better to keep to one’s self treasures which will be unappreciated.

One thing will always stand in the way of the vogue of Sebastian Bach’s vocal works—the difficulty of translation. When they are rendered into French, they lose all their charm and oftentimes become ridiculous.

One of the most amazing characteristics of Madame Viardot’s talent was her astonishing facility in assimilating all styles of music. She was trained in the old Italian music and she revealed its beauties as no one else has ever done. As for myself, I saw only its faults. Then she sang Schumann and Gluck and even Glinka whom she sang in Russian. Nothing was foreign to her; she was at home everywhere.

She was a great friend of Chopin and she remembered his playing almost exactly and could give the most valuable directions about the way he interpreted his works. I learned from her that the great pianist’s (great musician’s, rather) execution was much simpler than has been generally supposed. It was as far removed from any manifestation of bad taste as it was from cold correctness. She told me the secret of the true tempo rubato without which Chopin’s music is disfigured. It in no way resembles the dislocations by which it is so often caricatured.

I have spoken of her great talent as a pianist. We saw this one evening at a concert given by Madame Schumann. After Madame Viardot had sung some of Schumann’s lieder with the great pianist playing the accompaniments, the two great artists played the illustrious author’s duet for two pianos, which fairly bristles with difficulties, with equal virtuosity.

When Madame Viardot’s voice began to break, she was advised to devote herself to the piano. If she had, she would have found a new career and a second reputation. But she did not want to make the change, and for several years she presented the sorry spectacle of genius contending with adversity. Her voice was broken, stubborn, uneven, and intermittent. An entire generation knew her only in a guise unworthy of her.

Her immoderate love of music was the cause of the early modification of her voice. She wanted to sing everything she liked and she sang Valentine in Les Huguenots, Donna Anna in Don Juan, besides other rôles she should never have undertaken if she wanted to preserve her voice. She came to realize this at the end of her life. “Don’t do as I did,” she once told a pupil. “I wanted to sing everything, and I ruined my voice.”

On January 18, 1825, the singer and opera director Léon Carvalho was born in Mauritius.

From 1876 he was director of the Opéra-Comique in Paris, where the premieres of the operas "Hoffmanns Erzählungen", "Lakmé" and Massenet's "Manon" took place under his direction.

Aino Ackté was the most renowned Finnish female singer at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Having started her career as a lyrical soprano at the Grand Opera in Paris, she went on to achieve fame throughout Europe as a star of dramatic operas. The role of Salome, a part in which she embodied the modernism of her era, produced her greatest international triumphs. Aino Ackté later directed her musicality, energy and capacity for hard work towards the advancement of opera in her homeland. She was a notable cultural personality of the early 20th century.

In 1893, when the 17-year-old Aino sang in a concert given by her mother, Emmy Achté (1850 - 1924), her voice, talent and appearance immediately attracted attention. She stepped into the limelight from within a family circle which had provided her with the foundation for her musical training. Her mother was an ambitious and enterprising force in the musical world of Helsinki; in addition to an extensive operatic repertoire, she possessed skills as a teacher and organiser. Aino's father Lorenz Achté (1835 - 1900) was a versatile musical figure: a composer, opera singer and conductor. Without the aid of her mother's energy, Aino's career would not have proceeded so swiftly, although right from the start she had eminent supporters in Finland, including Oskar Merikanto (1868 - 1924), later to become a faithful accompanist. In addition to studying in Stockholm and Dresden, Emmy Achté had attended the Paris Conservatoire; and Paris was chosen as the place for Aino's studies, both for the quality of teaching and the opportunities that opened up to those who were accepted by the conservatory and studied there.The Paris Conservatoire represented the acme of French musical culture. Perhaps judges on the panel for the 1894 entry test were surprised by Aino Ackté's sound basic training, the Nordic clarity - to French ears - of her voice and the young woman's earnest manner: their unanimous decision to award her first place among the 197 applicants for Henri Duvernoy's singing class and Alfred Girodet's opera class is an indication of Ackté's early-acquired excellence. Her French training steered the course of her career, though she later made notable decisions not based on her schooling.The three years of study at the Conservatoire were not a purely positive time. Ackté had a foretaste of the competition that prevailed amongst singers. Duvernoy was an able and strict teacher who guarded his favourite pupils jealously and ordered them around in a dictatorial fashion. Ackté's mother also seemed excessively protective at times. Ackté changed the H in her surname to K because she was teased: pronounced in the French manner - achetée - the name meant 'bought (woman)'. Her ambition, sense of purpose and capacity for hard work soon became apparent. Her important examination concerts were sometimes a disappointment to her, but she wound up her final year by winning the first prize with her renditions of arias from Verdi's Rigoletto and Gounod's Faust. This assured her of a position at the Paris Grand Opera - then known as the Théâtre National de l'Opéra, where she had already been noticed earlier.The Grand Opera was the national stronghold of French music, especially after it was finally possible in 1875 to inaugurate its magnificent building following the Franco-Prussian war. The post of director of the opera made its occupant one of the country's most important personages. Pierre Gailhard (1848 - 1918), who had made a career as a baritone, had become the assistant director back in 1884, and with a few interruptions he remained in positions of leadership until 1908. Gailhard generally supported Ackté, who later remembered the director as a "monumental" figure. But he also demanded return favours - as in 1899, when he linked the renewal of his own and Ackté's contracts and used Ackté as a go-between in negotiations with the relevant minister. In Paris, Ackté adopted the grand-opera style, which aimed at an impressive stage presence in addition to a high standard of singing. In such a school the lyrical soprano began to develop into a dramatic one.In 1897 the Grand Opera signed a two-year contract with Ackté. Her début appearance as Marguerite in Faust was a breakthrough, and room was made in the following week's programme for three Ackté Evenings; there were four opera performances a week. Even back in her conservatorium days, Ackté's voice had been compared to the bright, clear voice of the Swede Kristina (Christina) Nilsson (1843 - 1921); the words 'clarity' and 'purity' were often

used to describe Ackté's voice as well. Nilsson, who had ended her career before Ackté's time, had achieved great success in the United States, and it was not only a positive thing that Ackté was later compared to Nilsson there. Nilsson's example may have contributed to Ackté's decision to retire from performing while her voice was still at its peak.Ackté's début was well received in Paris, with a few exceptions due to 'singer politics'. In Finland, which Ackté visited every year for both holidays and performances, her harshest critic was Karl Flodin (1858 - 1925). He was sometimes inconsistent, praising the singer in the Nya Pressen newspaper and criticising her in Euterpe, of which he was the editor. The young generation at Euterpe - its real cultural group - admired and supported Ackté, and this led to conflict with Flodin. According to Ackté's surmise, Flodin's attitude had its roots in the Finnish state scholarship for studies in Paris awarded to her and not to Flodin's future wife. Ackté's success led to other envious reactions as well in Finland. These included the playing down of her positive critiques in France. But in general, the genuine reviews were favourable: Oskar Merikanto was open in his admiration, and he wrote rejoinders to Flodin and others. Later on, the tone of reviews was more qualified in Sweden and the United States than in Germany and Britain.In addition to the part of Marguerite, Ackté's successful early roles in the older operatic literature included the part of Alceste in Gluck's opera of the same name and of Benjamin - a rare boy's role in her career, which she sang in 1899 - in Méhul's Joseph. In Gounod's Roméo et Juliette the leading female role was well suited to Ackté; it had also been a favourite role of Nellie Melba (1861 - 1931). When Gailhard was reappointed in 1900, he engaged Melba on a short-term contract. Melba's and Ackté's repertoires had the same characteristics; Mozart and Donizetti were relegated to the sidelines. Ackté continued to consider herself the primadonna; her competitor in the company was Lucienne Bréval (1869 - 1935), who can perhaps be regarded as the main soprano on account of her long-term engagement. There were not many new works - not even French ones - in Gailhard's cautious repertoire. It has been said that the opera house presented well-known works suited to gala performances for visiting royalty. Thus Ackté was later obliged to sing Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen, a role which she regarded as "written for old maids". Her most important new role was that of Nedda in Leoncavallo's veristic I Pagliacci - it was a sign of the singer's attempts at self-renewal.In 1900 Ackté put in much hard work at the Paris Exposition: along with Albert Edelfelt, she was regarded as a cultural ambassador, and her familiarity with Paris and her diplomatic skills - at the tender age of 24 - contributed to the success of the Finnish pavilion and to Finland's presentation of itself as an autonomous and cultured nation. Edelfelt had followed Ackté's career from the start, and factors that united them included their spiritual kinship as supporters of Alfred Dreyfus. Edelfelt's warm admiration - which was reciprocated - is evident in the portraits that he painted: his large full-length portrait of the singer (1901) reveals his subject's purposefulness and personal aura.Ackté's personal life gave no cause for gossip - which was regarded as an exception at the Grand Opera. But initially the company was opposed to her marrying. (From her student days on, she had been secretly engaged to the lawyer Heikki Renvall.) However, during her new period under contract at the turn of the century, marriage seemed advantageous for Ackté. The wedding took place in Helsinki in the spring of 1901. When the primadonna made her first gramophone recording the following year, she announced herself as 'Madame Ackté from the Opera' and signed the disc accordingly.The poor recording technology of the pioneering age of the gramophone cannot conceal the

brilliance and sureness of her voice, as can be heard in her breakthrough piece, the 'Jewel Song' aria from Faust. The records also give an indication of Ackté's fine coloratura technique. The French language, in which she also sings German and Norwegian songs, does, however, create limitations; and a few recordings soon proved outdated as far as interpretation was concerned. A fire at Edison's before the First World War destroyed about thirty of Ackté's recordings which were ready for pressing. Gramophone records did not acquire the same importance for her as they did for Enrico Caruso (1873 - 1921).Ackté appeared on the stage with Caruso aboard the ship that took her to America. The Metropolitan Opera in New York had been wooing Ackté for some time, and this gave her the opportunity to break free from the stale routines of the Grand Opera. The Metropolitan engaged her for a total of two years from 1903 to 1905. She joined the company at the same time as Caruso but did not achieve the same degree of success. The public had its favourites, who were often representatives of the Italian rather than the French school. Ackté could not adjust to the style of criticism of the musical journals, regarding it as corrupt. The programmes of the Metropolitan's famous continent-wide tours show that Ackté took second place to the American Emma Eames (1865 - 1952), who had already returned to the company from Paris in 1891. The Swedish-American Olive Fremstad (1871 - 1951) and the Croatian Milka Ternina (1863 - 1941), whose voice Ackté admired, were among the main stars. Ackté noticed that the beautiful American Geraldine Farrar (1882 - 1967) was singing some of her star roles in Paris and saw the same thing happening at the Metropolitan. The return to Europe was a relief. Her closer acquaintance with Wagner's operas may be considered a positive aspect of her time in New York.Ackté continued to make guest appearances at the Grand Opera in Paris, but she sang ever more frequently at the main opera houses in Britain and Germany, now taking soprano roles in Wagner's The Mastersingers, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, The Flying Dutchman and Siegfried. Puccini's Tosca and Massenet's Thaïs, with their passionate roles, had also been added to her repertoire. In Germany solo tours made her well known throughout the country. In France she was well known only in Paris. The season of German opera at Covent Garden in 1907, during which Ackté was a success in Wagner roles, brought her to the attention of the London public. But while performing in Cologne in the spring of 1906, Ackté had heard Richard Strauss (1864 - 1949) rehearsing an opera whose challenges attracted her: as Salome, Ackté made a decisive shift to the modern operatic art of her era - if not to the extreme avant-garde.Ackté turned to Strauss for guidance and worked assiduously to learn the difficult role. Strauss also persuaded her to perform the Dance of the Seven Veils herself, and this opened up a new dimension in her acting skills. She made the part of Salome into a dramatic performance that stressed the passionate rather than the 'perverted' nature of the role. Interest was also aroused by her style of acting in the role, a style which was influenced by Sarah Bernhardt. An integral aspect was Salome's orientiental-style costume, which the singer had had made at Worth's, the leading Paris fashion house.During the première of Salome in Leipzig in April 1907, Ackté also became aware of the physical difficulties of the role, feeling that she had miscalculated her strength. But in Dresden, where the world première had been held, she was already carrying the part through to a triumphant final scene which became a sort of Ackté trademark. She regarded the role as the high point of her career. It is thanks to the fact that in 1910 she was the first person to sing Salome in England that she has gone down in the annals of London opera. There permission had finally been granted for a production of Strauss' opera (though in the opinion of

both Ackté and Thomas Beecham, who was directing the Covent Garden season, the libretto had been censored to the point of absurdity), and the première was a splendid operatic and social success. The leading critic and Strauss scholar Ernest Newman (1868 - 1959) wrote that Ackté acted and sang with indefatigable spirit and telling characterisation.Ackté had sung the world premières of Sibelius' song Höstkväll ('Autumn Evening'), which he dedicated to her, and Jubal, and she hoped to persuade the composer to accompany her on a tour of Germany in spring 1911, when a performance of a new song with orchestral accompaniment that he had composed for her could be given. Ackté's triumph in London was clouded by a telegram from Sibelius informing her of his rejection of the tour and of the composition, which had already been drafted. The singer was justifiably offended, though she promised to perform songs by Sibelius in future. In 1913 Sibelius sent her Lounnotar ('Nature Spirit'), which she regarded as a work of genius and extraorinarily difficult - though she performed it successfully in Britain. Sibelius had earlier stated in the press that he considered Ackté the most outstanding interpreter of Salome that he had heard. In 1913 Juhani Aho submitted to Sibelius a stage adaptation by Ackté of his novel Juha, which had been published in 1911. The singer hoped to interest the composer in it, but Sibelius never composed a Juha - though both Aarre Merikanto and Leevi Madetoja later did so.In Helsinki, where Ackté produced, directed, sang and danced Salome in 1911, she had publicly brought up the issue of the need for opera. In the same year she and Edvard Fazer (1861 - 1943) founded the Kotimainen ('Domestic') opera company, at whose opening night she sang the main role of Anita in Massenet's La Navarraise. She had translated the libretto into Finnish, and she directed the production. Later operas produced by Aino were directed by Emmy Achté, whose experiences during the golden age of Finnish opera in the 1870s encouraged the enterprise. Ackté's energetic activities extended to Savonlinna, whose Operatic Summer she directed from 1912 to 1916 and again in 1930. The productions staged at Savonlinna included Finnish works such as Aino (1912) by Erkki Melartin (1875 - 1937) and the musical Talkootanssit by Ilmari Hannikainen (1892 - 1955); in dictatorial fashion, Ackté forced Hannikainen, who had inherited Merikanto's position as her accompanist, to compose the latter work. As late as 1938 - 39 she was asked to be the director of the Finnish Opera. She put together a magnificent autumn season; even Joan Manén's Nerón y Acté, rarely performed thereafter, was a success. However, the expenditure on guest performers, sets and costumes incurred by Ackté led to a dispute with the management, and she submitted her resignation.The singer's operatic career was already drawing to a close with her guest appearances at Covent Garden and elsewhere on the eve of the First World War. During the war, which prevented her from performing on the Continent and facilitated her farewell to the stage, she appeared in concerts and some operas in Sweden (Thaïs, 1915) and at home. In Finland the numerous singers with whom she worked at the opera were able to regard her as their teacher.During the first decade of the century Ackté had become estranged from Heikki Renvall, from whom she was officially divorced in 1917. In 1919 she remarried, her new husband being the general and provincial governor Bruno Jalander (1872 - 1966). She assisted him in a number of ways, making notes on his experiences in the Caucasus and during the period of turmoil in Finland (1932) and participating in activities in support of Finnish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.In her youth Aino Ackté had translated the Lastuja ('Shavings') short stories by Juhani Aho, an author whom she greatly admired, into French and had published some in Paris journals. The short anthology Muistoja ja kuvitelmia ('Memories and Fancies', 1916) reveals

The flowers again hold her attention, and she plays with them as the orchestra commences a ravishing waltz theme. She at first pays little heed to the music, but its gay melody at last drifts to her soul and finds immediate expression. The difficult phrases fall from her lips like petals from a flower. Gleeful chromatics and happy trills are also thrown in, and we would soon forget it was the sad Ophelia did she not suddenly tire of this extravagant virtuosity. She turns to the shepherds and bids them harken to the song she will sing. Then follows a ballad whose moaning, minor harmonies sound like a sighing breeze. It is about the sirens beneath the water who lure men to its glassy depths. The wearied, worried mind of the mad girl now revels in a wild, merry laugh, which is as quickly followed by passionate sobs; but she finally remembers to finish her song about the siren. This strange, sad melody possesses a weird charm that is irresistible. Again she breaks into hilarious laughter and uncontrolled weeping. Grief without hope and joy without memory alternate in rapid succession. The music of this portion defies description. It is a perfect conflagration of impossible staccatos and scales. With one last sweeping chromatic run, that rushes like the whistling wind from low D to high E, Ophelia kneels down with her flowers and thinks only of them. The peasants retire from the scene, and the orchestra take up fragments of the waltz.

They play for some moments, while Ophelia contentedly rearranges her bouquet. But presently a wonderful change comes over the music. We hear only the string instruments and flute, and soon these, too, are hushed, while out of the air a magical song arises. It is the siren's ballad, faint as a vision but with full harmonies. Thomas has produced this effect of dream-music by having the chorus sing behind the scenes with closed mouth. This soft humming of a hidden chorus well resembles the buried voices of water-nymphs. Ophelia at once recognizes the song, and she is drawn by the music toward the stream, where she hopes to see the sirens. All unconscious, she pushes her way through the rushes and reeds on the bank. The chorus has ceased, and only the tender, liquid tones of the harp now fill the air. Ophelia steps too far and soon falls into the "weeping brook." Her dress bears her up for a time, and we hear her sweetly singing as she floats down the stream. It is no longer the ballad or the gay waltz, but quite another theme to which her memory now clings. It is Hamlet's glorious vow—

"Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love."