Pauline Viardot
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Pauline Viardot was a French dramatic mezzo-soprano, composer and pedagogue of Spanish descent. Born Michelle Ferdinande Pauline García, she came from a musical family and took up music at a young age
Viardot, c. 1845
Viardot as Valentina and Marietta Alboni as Urbano in Act 1 of Meyerbeer's Gli Ugonotti. Royal Italian Opera (Covent Garden) (1848) (lithograph by John Brandard)
Pauline Viardot at the piano listening to Frédéric Chopin. Sketch
Pauline Viardot
Ivan Turgenev
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Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West.
Pauline Viardot
…composer and writer, and two other daughters became concert singers. Her marriage did not stop the steady stream of infatuated men. The Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev in particular fell passionately in love with her after hearing her rendition of The Barber of Seville in Russia in 1843. In 1845, he left Russia to…
Portrait by Ilya Repin, 1874
Portrait of Ivan Turgenev by Eugène Lami, c. 1843–1844
Spasskoye-Lutovinovo, Turgenev's estate near Oryol
Turgenev received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1879.