Pauline Viardot - Early Life

Early Life

Michelle Ferdinande Pauline García was born in Paris to the Garcías, a Spanish opera family led by her father, tenor, singing teacher, composer and impresario Manuel García . Her godparents were Ferdinando Paer and Princess Pauline Galitsin, who provided her with her middle names. She was 13 years younger than her beautiful sister, diva Maria Malibran, but her father made Pauline his favorite and trained her on the piano and also gave her singing lessons.

As a small girl she travelled with her family to London, New York (where her father, mother, brother and sister gave the first performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni in the United States, in the presence of the librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte) and Mexico. By the age of six she was fluent in Spanish, French, English and Italian; later in her career, she sang Russian arias so well that she was taken for a native speaker. After her father's death in 1832, her mother, soprano Joaquína Sitchez took over her singing lessons, and forced her to focus her attention on her voice and away from the piano.

She had wanted to become a professional concert pianist. She had taken piano lessons with the young Franz Liszt and counterpoint and harmony classes with Anton Reicha, the teacher of Liszt and Hector Berlioz, and friend of Ludwig van Beethoven. It was with the greatest regret that she abandoned her strong vocation for the piano, which she did only because she did not dare to disobey her mother's wishes. She nevertheless remained an outstanding pianist all her life, and often played duets with her friend Frédéric Chopin, who approved of her arranging some of his mazurkas as songs, and even assisted her in this. Liszt, Ignaz Moscheles, Adolphe Adam, Camille Saint-Saëns and others have left accounts of her excellent piano playing.

After Malibran's death in 1836, aged 28, Pauline became a professional singer, with a vocal range from C3 to F6. However, her professional debut as a musician was as a pianist, accompanying her brother-in-law, the violinist Charles Auguste de Bériot.