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| ISBN-13: | 9781742242576 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNSW Press |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 464 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
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Divas
Mathilde Marchesi and her pupils
By Roger Neill
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
Copyright © 2016 Roger NeillAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74224-257-6
CHAPTER 1
To be a professional
1821–54
Mathilde Marchesi was born Lisette Sophie Jeannette Mathilde Graumann in Frankfurt am Main on 24 March 1821, the youngest of three sisters. Her father, Johann Friedrich Graumann, was a merchant in the city, 'wealthy and highly respected' according to Mathilde. Her mother was Catherine Elizabeth Graumann (née Engelhard).
Her father had numerous relations in France, particularly in Alsace, where her grandfather lived; and cousins in Paris including the Haussmanns. Baron Haussmann was to be responsible for the re-creation of the city in the 1850s and 60s, comprising the major boulevards, four new parks and the new opera house, the Palais Garnier. Mathilde's father was the brother of Baroness Dorothea von Ertmann, who lived in Vienna and had been a favourite pupil of Beethoven, his 'dear and beloved Dorothea Caecilia', his late piano sonata in A major, Opus 101 dedicated to her. Mathilde had two older sisters, Marie and Charlotte.
Now the most important financial centre in continental Europe, Frankfurt am Main in the early nineteenth century, although not the great metropolis it is now, was already a major location for both the banking and stock markets, as well as the Bethmann and the Rothschild families. Aged five, Mathilde, 'Tilda', was sent to a day school in Frankfurt. In her memoirs she describes herself as having 'a very lively and restless disposition'. At school she learned first how to knit and, perhaps a critical part of the successful teacher's skills, how to sit still. The following year she battled 'with vowels and consonants and the four terrible rules of primary education'. For a while she found herself sitting next to the city executioner's daughter, 'whom I pitied with all my heart, [but who] was treated with absolute contempt' by schoolmates.
Mathilde was conscious from an early age that she 'took great delight in [her] studies; [her] craving for knowledge was never satisfied', and as a consequence she was regularly first in class. This was another valuable characteristic, which would re-emerge in force when she started to teach. In fact her motivation in that direction was evident to her while she was still at primary school, 'for I have a lively recollection of not only helping many [schoolmates] with their lessons, but even at times doing their work for them'.
Her musicality, aided by her 'happy disposition', soon became apparent and she claimed to sing 'from morning to night', and was given the solo parts in performances at school. She also sang regularly at home, especially for guests, but only if they pleased her and seemed likely to appreciate her. Not unnaturally, this tough stance towards guests led to friction with her parents.
Mathilde was devoted to her mother, seeing her as 'the incarnation of everything that is good noble and beautiful ... not only an exemplary wife and mother, but also the beau-ideal of a German woman'. Because her mother saw her as specially gifted, she was allowed, from an early age, and in preference to her sisters, to accompany her grandmother to the opera in Frankfurt, where her grandmother shared a box with 'Baron Anselm de Rothschild'. Baron Anselm, whose real name was Amschel, was the eldest son of the founding father of the Rothschild banking dynasty, Mayer Amschel Rothschild. While his four brothers established businesses in London, Paris, Vienna and Naples, Amschel stayed in Frankfurt running the 'home office'. In one generation, all the brothers became immensely rich, rising from relative poverty in Frankfurt's Jewish ghetto. At the Frankfurt Opera, Mathilde (with her grandmother) first heard two of the greatest singers of the age, the 'Swedish Nightingale' Jenny Lind and Manuel Garcia (the elder's) daughter, Pauline Viardot-Garcia. Pauline's brother, Manuel Garcia the younger, was to become Mathilde's most influential singing teacher.
Following primary school, Mathilde and her sisters were educated at home by a governess and a series of 'the best masters for literature, music, harmony, languages, dancing etc'. At the same time, she learned cooking, ironing, sewing, mending, embroidery and 'a great deal of knitting besides'. She was happy neither to sew nor to knit until her sewing mistress began to read to her during the lessons – fairy tales and plays – a ploy which appeared to transform her dreary work.
At fifteen, 'passionately fond of dancing', she accompanied her parents to parties and balls in Frankfurt, claiming to have been the first in the city to take up the polka and the mazurka. This phase was somewhat short-lived as she became totally engaged, 'heart and soul', in the study of music – piano, harmony and singing. With friends she played the piano in quartets and trios by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, and also participated in part-singing, 'which did a great deal to further my own musical knowledge'.
* * *
Her first significant singing teacher in Frankfurt was Felice Ronconi, brother of the famous Italian baritone Giorgio Ronconi. Alongside his brothers, Felice had been taught by their father Domenico Ronconi, an international tenor in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, who had turned to teaching in Milan at the end of his performing career. Aside from appearances at the Mariinsky in St Petersburg, the Paris Opéra and La Scala Milan, Domenico had sung at the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, in Paris in 1810.
Mathilde was not impressed with Ronconi. She believed that he made musical demands of her for which she was not yet ready. 'He made me sing the most difficult exercises of Bordogni', she wrote, 'and gave me for my first song the grand cavatina of Norma!' This is a piece that only a few can perform adequately in our own time. She felt that she did not come up to his expectations. 'Bitterly disappointed', she gave up her singing lessons, concentrating instead on studying English and Italian. Nevertheless, as a teenager she felt able to begin her teaching career at this time: 'I induced some friends to let me give them lessons in Italian and music', she wrote. Two of them carried on taking lessons with her, but others 'thought me too severe and left me'. This was to become the story of her pedagogical life – an unambiguous divide between satisfied and dissatisfied customers, between those who appreciated and valued her strict regime and those who did not.
At sixteen, she persuaded her parents that she could accept an invitation from family friends, the Pfeffels, to go with them for the first time to England. She was to spend three months on the expedition, fighting against homesickness, but heard for the first time an Italian opera in Italian – Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia. This was a great revelation for her, a turning point in her life, although she was sharply critical of 'Tamburini's endless cadenzas [which] altogether failed to please me at the time'.
Returning to Frankfurt, Mathilde discovered that calamity had struck the Graumann family. Her father Johann had lost his entire fortune. They were now penniless and their whole way of life had to be reconsidered. Mathilde's eldest sister Marie was already married, but the middle daughter Charlotte and Mathilde herself had to decide how they might earn their livelihoods. It was determined that Mathilde should not become a professional musician (a career deemed unsuitable for a girl of her class), but instead become a governess. A well-brought-up girl, she had many of the appropriate accomplishments, including a propensity for teaching. Unfortunately, she wrote, 'I had not the slightest inclination for that hard and unpleasant calling'. However, realising the situation she was in, she raised no objections and so, in 1843, went to stay in Vienna with her father's sisters, Baroness von Ertmann and Madame de Schmidt, with the intention of finding a suitable position in that city.
* * *
Both aunts in Vienna treated her kindly. The widow of an Austrian Field-Marshal, pianist Aunt Dorothea was, however, like Mathilde's parents, implacably opposed to Mathilde's desire to become a professional musician. Instead she carried out Father Graumann's wish, finding a 'suitable' position for her – as governess for the six-year-old daughter of an aristocratic family in Vienna. She took the job, on the understanding that she would be allowed to devote some of her time to singing. Nevertheless, she was not happy:
The Countess, a young and pretty woman, was vain and proud, her husband was old and ugly, while their little daughter of six was sickly and completely spoiled. This was no rosy prospect for a girl accustomed to a free and independent life, nor were the terms offered very brilliant ... However, I agreed to everything, or, rather, my opinion was not asked.
However, help was soon in sight. Her sister Charlotte had become governess for General Lodivick's daughter in London, and, unwilling to see her younger sister miss her vocation, Charlotte offered Mathilde her savings so that she could continue her musical studies in Vienna. Her parents in Frankfurt were persuaded and the vain Countess was informed, so Mathilde was free again to pursue the 'career for which I had both talent and inclination'.
Back living with her aunts in Vienna, Mathilde took great pleasure from both the piano-playing of Dorothea Ertmann, and from her stories of Beethoven:
'In the beginning,' so she told me, 'Beethoven had to struggle against violent opposition, as his music was considered unintelligible and tedious. Being anxious to hear his new sonatas, I went one day to Haslinger's music shop, where I tried some of them on a grand-piano. In my excitement I failed to notice a young man standing in a corner, but presently he came up to me, and you can imagine my astonishment when he suddenly seized my hand, and thanked me in the warmest terms for my interpretation of his sonatas. It was Beethoven!'
From that moment, Dorothea and the composer formed a close friendship, Beethoven becoming 'a daily guest in our house'. And, several decades later, Dorothea had Mathilde play Beethoven's sonatas on a daily basis, her aunt acting as her coach. Seeing, as she did, the talents and drive of the young Mathilde, in the words of her daughter Blanche, Dorothea 'at once understood that here was no governess, but that a great artist lay hidden behind this modest young girl's simple ways'.
At this stage, Mathilde was most in need of a new singing teacher, and her aunts, having scoured Vienna for suitable candidates, selected the composer and conductor Otto Nicolai for the task. Aside from his greatest achievements in a short life – founding the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and composing one of the staples of opera in German-speaking countries, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor) – at that time Nicolai was conductor and choir-master at the Hofoper, the Court Opera in Vienna. Accordingly, Mathilde was able to attend both rehearsals and performances there, a great opportunity for the fast-learning girl. However, as a singing teacher, he was really not what she needed:
Nicolai seemed to take great interest in my studies, but he told me frankly that he understood the rehearsal of an opera much better than he did the production of the human voice ... He often contradicted himself, had no physical knowledge of the voice, and, for fear of straining mine, directed his attention solely to pronunciation and delivery.
Still in need of the right teacher, perhaps the greatest value for Mathilde at this period in her life was the dazzling array of publicly-performed music in Vienna – opera, concerts from the recently-formed Philharmonic (conducted by Nicolai himself), chamber music and recitals. In addition, there was no shortage of music in private houses and it was at one of these that she heard one of Schubert's favourite singers and closest friends, Baron Carl von Schönstein, to whom the composer dedicated several of his songs, including the great cycle Die schöne Müllerin.
In 1844 an Italian opera company opened in Vienna, with a number of star performers among the principal singers, including the great contralto Marietta Alboni and the mezzo Pauline Viardot-Garcia, whom she had first heard with her grandmother in Frankfurt as a teenager. Brought up immersed in Austro-German music, Mathilde was now able to become familiar with Italian opera. This time, she was able not only to attend rehearsals – she turned the pages for Nicolai, who accompanied the singers at the piano at Viardot's house – but also she was taken by her aunt to meet Viardot, who heard Mathilde sing. 'My dear child', Viardot said to her, 'you are not on the right road; you should go to Paris and study with my brother, Manuel Garcia'. This was to become another critical turning point for Mathilde Graumann – the most immediate problem being how to sustain such an opportunity financially.
It was around this time that Mathilde became friendly with Sophie von Löwenthal ('Frau von L'), mistress of the Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau, and through her with the poet himself. She wrote wittily about the upheavals as Lenau fell in love with another woman, and of Frau von L's revenge on them both, and recorded in her memoirs a short verse that the poet had inscribed in Mathilde's album. It is a strange piece to write into the album of a young woman friend who is neither wife nor lover. Entitled 'Inner Court', it ends: 'As thought, the spirit is the light, / Warmth in the heart the spirit is through love, / What is not the spirit's, may be forfeit for the Court, / Lust and sorrow – may they die and scatter.'
* * *
Persuaded that studying with Manuel Garcia in Paris was the right step, but lacking the necessary funding for such a major move, in May 1844 Mathilde returned home to Frankfurt, where she encountered stiff resistance to her plans, so she immediately began to teach voice students with the aim of building up her financial resources. While the names of these early pupils of Mathilde remain unknown, they will have represented a further important stepping stone on her journey.
In August, aged twenty-three, she made her public debut in Frankfurt in a concert organised by two young violinist brothers from Vienna, George and Joseph Hellmesberger, sons of the concertmaster of the Court Opera in Vienna, Professor Georg Hellmesberger. They were later to become significant figures in Mathilde's life. In the programme for the concert, Mathilde's name was modestly given as 'M. G.', that being the fashion for amateurs at that time. 'I was warmly received', she reported, without disclosing what she actually sang.
Later that same year, Mathilde first made the acquaintance of another musician who was to make a major contribution to her musical development – the composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. They first met at the house of the painter Jakob Becker and his wife.
Mendelssohn was a close friend of Mathilde's aunt Dorothea and 'it was because he remembered my aunt's kindness that he took particular interest in me'. Mendelssohn went on to teach Mathilde how to sing his compositions, not only songs, but also trios and quartets, with the composer sometimes taking the bass line, sometimes the tenor.
It was Mendelssohn who persuaded Mathilde's parents that it would be appropriate for her to sing in May 1845 at one of the Rhenish festivals in Düsseldorf. For this event he taught her an aria from Mozart's La clemenza di Tito (Sextus or Annius? She does not disclose), together with the contralto part in Handel's oratorio Joshua and the mezzo-soprano part in Mendelssohn's great masterpiece (today rather neglected) Die erste Walpurgisnacht. Mathilde sang in three concerts and regarded the whole experience as a major breakthrough in her budding singing career, amateur though she still was.
Her success in Düsseldorf, together with the support of Mendelssohn and the rise in her financial resources resulting from her teaching work, resulted in her parents being more positive about her Parisian intentions. Yet there was a hitch. Suddenly and unexpectedly Mendelssohn pronounced a very negative attitude towards Paris. His opinion was that:
... no true and right feeling for art existed there, and that everything was sacrificed to effect – I could learn nothing, and could only unlearn what I knew.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Divas by Roger Neill. Copyright © 2016 Roger Neill. Excerpted by permission of University of New South Wales Press Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Preface,Acknowledgments,
1 To be a professional 1821–54,
2 Teaching in Vienna, first star pupils 1854–61,
3 Paris and Cologne 1861–68,
4 Back to the Conservatoire in Vienna 1868–78,
5 Moving to Paris 1881,
6 Melba, Eames and the class of '86,
7 Shoals of Americans 1887–99,
8 Boatloads of Australians and New Zealanders 1887–99,
9 The last lap 1899–1913,
10 Marchesi's magical method,
Notes,
Appendices,
1 Chronology of Mathilde Marchesi's pupils,
2 Marchesi's lineage and legacy,
Bibliography,
Index,