Pauline Viardot

Pauline Viardot [née García] (pronounced: [po.lin vjaʁ.do];18 July 1821 – 18 May 1910) was a leading nineteenth-century French mezzo-soprano, pedagogue, and composer of Spanish descent.

Born Michelle Ferdinande Pauline García, her name appears in various forms. When it is not simply "Pauline Viardot", it most commonly appears in association with her maiden name García or the unaccented form, Garcia. This name sometimes precedes Viardot and sometimes follows it. Sometimes the words are hyphenated; sometimes they are not. She achieved initial fame as "Pauline García"; the accent was dropped at some point, but exactly when is not clear. After her marriage, she referred to herself simply as "Mme. Viardot".

She came from a musical family and took up music at a young age. She began performing as teenager and had a long and illustrious career as a star performer. Her three daughters also pursued careers in music performances.

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 Joaquina Sitchez, took over her singing lessons, and forced her to focus her attention on her voice and away from the piano.

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