Pauline Viardot, a reigning 19th-century diva as well as a composer and teacher, painted as Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, by Ary Scheffer.Credit…Fine Art Images/Heritage Images, via Getty Images
Toward the end of her life, the opera diva Pauline Viardot took stock of her vast social network. She wrote a three-page, multicolumn list of everyone she had ever met, worked with or loved.
She ended up with over 300 names, a who’s-who of 19th-century icons: composers like Rossini, Liszt and Schumann; novelists like George Sand, Victor Hugo and Ivan Turgenev, her lover; Giuseppe Mazzini and Napoleon III. Full story.
Hilary Poriss (The New York Times) / July 16, 2021
Weblink : www.nytimes.com
Photo credit : www.nytimes.com
