Event
The Prima Donna as Teacher: Pauline Viardot and Her Students
Colloquium Lecture by Hilary Poriss
The Prima Donna as Teacher: Pauline Viardot and Her Students
Colloquium Lecture by Hilary Poriss
March 4, 2025 (Tuesday) — 5:15 PM to 6:30 PM
Lerner Center (Penn Music Building) - Room 101
201 S. 34th Street, Room 101
ABSTRACT
As Mary Ann Smart once noted, the silence surrounding nineteenth-century singers, particularly after they retire, is deafening. Not only were many of their accomplishments quickly forgotten, but their voices also faded quickly into oblivion. Because they were active prior to the age of recording, one of the only ways that performers could ensure that their voices would continue to resonate was through their students. Pauline Viardot (1821-1911), one of the 19th-century’s most renowned divas, managed to maintain a rigorous schedule as a pedagogue as professor of singing at the Paris Conservatoire (1871-1875) and in her private studio throughout much of her adult life. In total, Viardot instructed more than 300 men, women, and children, many of whom went on to achieve fame on the international stage (Marianne Brandt, Désirée Artôt, and Aglaja Orgeni are just a few).
In this talk, I explore Viardot’s relationships with her singers, traces of which are scattered throughout her prolific correspondence. I will address the close connections that Viardot formed with some of her students, tracing her relationships with them through their correspondence. The image that emerges is of a teacher dedicated to perpetuating her own unique style while simultaneously encouraging a group of young artists to invent themselves anew.
ABOUT HILARY PORISS
Hilary Poriss is Professor and Chair of the Department of Music (College of Arts, Media and Design, Northeastern University). Her primary research interests are in the areas of 19th-century Italian and French opera, performance practice, diva culture, and the aesthetics of 19th-century musical culture. She is the author of Changing the Score: Arias, Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Oxford, 2009) and Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville (Oxford, 2021), and co-editor of Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera (Cambridge, 2010) and The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 2012). Her articles and reviews have been published in the New York Times, 19th-Century Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, Verdi Forum, Journal of British Studies, Music & Letters, Journal of Musicology, and other musicological books and journals.
ATTENDANCE & REGISTRATION
This event is free and open to the public. If you attend in person, there is no need to register. We ask that you join us in person if at all possible, but for those of you who are unable to physically attend we encourage you to participate via Zoom. Please use the link to attend virtually.
ABOUT COLLOQUIUM
This lecture is part of the 2024-25 Penn Music Colloquium Series. The Department of Music's main Colloquium Series showcases new research by leading scholars in music and sound studies and composers both in the United States and internationally. All Music Colloquia will take place in Room 101 of the Lerner Center on Tuesdays at 5:15 PM.