as Urbano in Act 1 of Meyerbeer's
Gli Ugonotti.
Royal Italian Opera (Covent Garden) (1848) (lithograph by
John Brandard) In 1837, 16-year-old Pauline García gave her first concert performance in Brussels. She made her opera debut as Desdemona in
Rossini's
Otello in London in 1839. This proved to be the surprise of the season. Despite her flaws, she had an exquisite vocal technique combined with an astonishing degree of passion. At the age of 17, she met and was courted by the famous French romantic poet
Alfred de Musset, who had earlier been taken with her sister Maria Malibran. Some sources say he asked for Pauline's hand in marriage, but she declined. However, she remained on good terms with him for many years.), and
Giacomo Meyerbeer, for whom she created Fidès in
Le prophète. She spoke fluent Spanish, French, Italian, English, German, and
Russian, and composed songs in a variety of national techniques. Her career took her to the best music halls across
Europe, and from 1843 to 1846 she was permanently attached to the Opera in
Saint Petersburg, Russia. She spent many happy hours at
George Sand's home at Nohant, with Sand and her partner
Frédéric Chopin. She was given expert advice by Chopin on her piano playing, her vocal compositions, and her arrangements of some of his
mazurkas as songs. He in turn derived from her some firsthand knowledge about Spanish music. She sang the title role of
Gluck's opera
Orphée et Eurydice at
Théâtre Lyrique in Paris in November 1859, directed by Hector Berlioz who arranged the opera, and she sang this role over 150 times. She was well acquainted with
Jenny Lind, the Swedish soprano and philanthropist, who had been a student of her brother. A notable remark of hers was made to the English soprano
Adelaide Kemble when they attended the late concert in London by the great Italian soprano
Giuditta Pasta, who was clearly past her prime. Asked by Kemble what she thought of the voice, she replied 'Ah! It is a ruin, but then so is
Leonardo's
Last Supper'. In 1863, Pauline Viardot retired from the stage. She and her family left France due to her husband's public opposition to
Emperor Napoleon III and settled in
Baden-Baden, Germany. In 1870, however,
Johannes Brahms persuaded her to sing in the first public performance of his
Alto Rhapsody, at
Jena. After the fall of Napoleon III later in 1870, they returned to France, where she taught at the Paris Conservatory and, until her husband's death in 1883, presided over a music salon in the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Her students included
Ada Adini,
Désirée Artôt,
Selma Ek,
Emma Engdahl-Jägerskiöld,
Marie Hanfstängl,
Yelizaveta Lavrovskaya,
Rosa Linde,
Felia Litvinne,
Emilie Mechelin,
Aglaja Orgeni,
Helen Radnor,
Anna Eugénie Schoen-René,
Mafalda Salvatini,
Raimund von zur-Mühlen, and
Maria Wilhelmj. () Her pupil
Natalia Iretskaya later became the teacher of
Oda Slobodskaya and of
Lydia Lipkowska, who in turn taught
Virginia Zeani. She was also the godmother of Artôt's daughter
Lola Artôt de Padilla. In 1877, her daughter Marianne was briefly engaged to
Gabriel Fauré, but she later married composer
Alphonse Duvernoy. From the mid-1840s, until her retirement, she was renowned for her appearances in Mozart's opera
Don Giovanni, an opera with which her family had long been associated (see "Early life" above). In 1855, she had purchased Mozart's original manuscript of the opera in London. She preserved it in a shrine in her Paris home, where it was visited by many notable people, including
Rossini, who genuflected, and
Tchaikovsky, who said he was "in the presence of divinity". It was displayed at the Exposition Universelle of 1878, and at the centenary exhibition of
Don Giovanni's premiere in 1887. In 1889 she announced she would donate it to the
Conservatoire de Paris, and this occurred in 1892. ==Death==