Review: Life and Work of Pauline Viardot Garcia, Vol. 1, The Years of Fame, 1836–1863, by Barbara Kendall-Davies, and The Life and Work of Pauline Viardot Garcia, Vol. 2, The Years of Grace, 1863–1910, by Barbara Kendall-Davies

Abstract

Life and Work of Pauline Viardot Garcia , Vol. 1, The Years of Fame, 1836–1863 , by Barbara Kendall-Davies. 2nd ed. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. xxx, 599 pp. The Life and Work of Pauline Viardot Garcia , Vol. 2, The Years of Grace, 1863–1910 , by Barbara Kendall-Davies. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012. xxiv, 401 pp. Pauline Viardot (nee Garcia, 1821–1910) was musical royalty. Daughter of the tenor Manuel Garcia pere (1775–1832) and sister of two renowned musicians—the vocal pedagogue Manuel Garcia fils (1805–1906) and the mercurial mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran (1808–36)—Viardot was the youngest heir to an artistic kingdom. Her place within this dynasty helped to secure her fate as a highly influential musical and cultural figure of the nineteenth century. Not only did she become a beloved star of the operatic stage, she also developed into a distinctively versatile musician excelling in every art available to the prima donna: singer, composer, collaborator, entrepreneur, costume designer, and teacher. Her unparalleled talents, combined with her ability to surround herself with a legendary social circle (she knew virtually everyone), have made Viardot one of the most studied prima donnas of the nineteenth century. Barbara Kendall-Davies's Life and Work of Pauline Viardot Garcia joins the growing literature on this artist, a biography that does not presume to be scholarly but that nevertheless represents one of only a few full-length English-language accounts.1 Kendall-Davies's interest was sparked in the mid-1990s when, a talented singer herself, she became passionate about Viardot's compositions and was inspired to write about her. Her first project, an exploration of Viardot's tours to England, was published in 1998 in the Cahiers Ivan Tourgueniev—Pauline Viardot—Maria Malibran , followed by …