Provence and early years Eliette Mouret was born in
Mollans-sur-Ouvèze, where her parents, both teachers, owned a holiday home. She was reportedly seventeen at the time, though according to one biographer, "like many very beautiful women ... [she] was seventeen for an awfully long time". On this occasion, the smell of frying fish triggered her recurrent seasickness, and she had to be escorted ashore; Herbert von Karajan volunteered for the task. In 1955, they met up again in
London, by which time she had become obsessed with the maestro. The designated
godparents of Isabel and Arabella Karajan were, respectively, the
Vienna Philharmonic and
Berlin Philharmonic orchestras.
Working marriage Over the next three decades Eliette von Karajan constantly accompanied her husband, matching his program of travel and performances and attempting to shield him, as far as possible, from some of the more oppressive aspects of celebrity. Karajan valued his wife's musical judgment because she was neither a trained musician nor a professional musicologist; as a "mere music lover" he knew that she was more representative of concertgoers and record buyers than pundits or professional rivals. Between concerts, Karajan attended her husband's orchestral rehearsals.
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf,
Henri-Georges Clouzot,
Helmut Schmidt,
Marc Chagall, and the actress
Romy Schneider, with whom Eliette supposedly liked to flirt. However, relations cooled after Schneider, while staying as a house guest, used lipstick to scrawl graffiti all over the large mirror in the bathroom. It was "very awkward for my staff", Eliette later recalled.
Painting While still working as a professional fashion model, Eliette Mouret enrolled briefly at an art academy in London. Professional pressures, followed by a full-time marriage accompanied by motherhood, led to her never finishing the course. However, after a visit to the "Visuals Academy" (
Internationale Sommer Akademie für Bildenden Künste) set up in Switzerland by
Oskar Kokoschka, she returned to her art. She was supported by several famous of the time who were also friends. These included late surrealists such as
Ernst Fuchs,
Jörg Immendorff and
Marc Chagall whom she visited frequently at his home in
Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Her husband was particularly enthusiastic about Eliette's emergence as an artist.
Widow and benefactor Herbert von Karajan suffered a heart attack on 15 July 1989 and died the next day. While he was alive the management of his media image had been of great importance to him, and following his death Eliette adeptly applied "secrecy and speed" to ensure that his funeral did not become a press spectacle. Only around ten people knew of the arrangements for the private funeral ceremony in the little cemetery at
Anif. As matters turned out, a large stone plinth was found a few centimeters under the surface at the position agreed, many years before, as Herbert's last resting place, and the burial was delayed for several hours after while a farmer used a heavy tractor with lifting tackle to drag the stone away. It was dark by the time the body of Herbert von Karajan could be buried, but the entire ceremony nevertheless remained a private family matter. In the longer term, the ambition was for the institute to celebrate and to make more widely known Herbert's achievements, along with the associated elements of his character, as interpreter, artist, promoter of talent and excellence, educator and entrepreneur-artist. the sculptor
Rachel Whiteread in 1996, the German artist in 1997 and the Graubünden singer-lyricist
Corin Curschellas in 2003. ==Notes and references==