#Jenny lind was married to franz lizt professional

Coming from the post-Renaissance courtesan to the professional artist of the Baroque and Classical era, from the bel canto madwoman to the modernist crying diva, from the helpless victim of traditional patriarchy to the powerful heroine of political emancipation, from the early-Romanticist alpine virgin to the late-Romanticist national siren, from the early-twentieth century recording angel to the mid-twentieth-century prima donna assoluta, from the post-war goddess to the late-twentieth century global media star, from the vernacular songstress of socialistic local peripheries to the post-socialist foreign favourite and migrating queen (here with special focus on the cultural production of prima donna in Slovenia), and from the late-capitalistic singing commodity to the post-national diva, the opera’s prima donna has experienced numerous cultural transformations and commodifications.

This article examines the historical constitution and construction of prima donna, probably the most intrinsic opera’s institution expanding from the end of the sixteenth century till today. The letters Viardot wrote during her trip to Warsaw and Germany provide a vivid and unusually detailed picture of these vagaries from a diva’s perspective. As John Rosselli has demonstrated in the person of the nineteenth-century impresario, the complexities of life on the road were manifold, generating a heightened level of uncertainty and anxiety that seeped into every interaction with other artists traversing the same rocky terrain. In this article, the focus is on the letters that she wrote to Louis over the course of this tour. These letters, in other words, provide a clear and nearly unprecedented picture of the life of a nineteenth-century virtuosa on the road. Throughout each of these communications she wove detailed descriptions about the music she sang, the people she encountered, and the money she earned. While she was away, she wrote to her husband Louis every day - long, chatty letters that often filled numerous pages. Her journeys have been amply documented by her biographers with the intriguing exception of one of the most important trips she took in the later years of her operatic career: during the months straddling 18, Viardot visited Warsaw and various cities in Germany, where she appeared in opera productions as well as in public and private concerts. Pauline Viardot’s life was no exception to this rule. Nineteenth-century prima donnas were continually on the move, and making a living as a famous diva meant travelling as far and as wide as possible under conditions that were not always terribly pleasant. If only someone would see her perform and understand what lay beneath: a soul driven by music, but pining for love. She suffered under the scrutiny of the public, and yearned for a day when someone would rescue her from the Colonel, and release her from the misery of parading before dilettantes, prostituting her voice and her art. Every night he forced her out on stage to sing for unappreciative fools. It is neither possible nor desirable to recover a singular idea of Grisi as a celebrity or as a woman instead, the multiple images of Grisi must be read as negotiations of identity on the part of the consumers as they participated in the nascent celebrity culture of the 1830s. The fluid and constantly negotiated relationship between the diva and her audience offered a locus for expressing social relations in London during a period of changing class and national definitions. Audience members could bring different versions of the diva home: through reports (or experiences with her) as a guest or entertainer at parties, through gossip about her personal life reported in newspapers and through pieces arranged 'as sung by' her. Italian singer Giulia Grisi was imagined and 'possessed' in various ways by members of diverse social groups in London during the 1830s.

Jenny lind was married to franz lizt