Désirée Artôt

Désirée Artôt (; 21 July 1835 – 3 April 1907) was a Belgian soprano (initially a mezzo-soprano), who was famed in German and Italian opera and sang mainly in Germany. In 1868 she was engaged, briefly, to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and professor at the Brussels Conservatory. Her uncle was the violinist Alexandre Artôt (1815–1845). He had been born Alexandre Joseph (or Joseph-Alexandre

Early career She studied with Pauline Viardot and Francesco Lamperti in London and Paris. She appeared in concerts in Belgium, the Netherlands and on 19 June 1857 at a State Concert in England. Giacomo Meyerbeer engaged her for the Paris Opéra, where she made her debut on 5 February 1858 as Fidès in his Le prophète, to great success. She also sang the title role in a condensed version of Gounod's Sapho. Hector Berlioz and others praised her singing in the Journal des Débats on 17 February. However, she abandoned the French repertoire and went to sing in Italy in 1859. She also sang in Berlin that year, at the opening of the Victoria Theatre with Lorini's Italian company. She was highly successful in The Barber of Seville, La Cenerentola, Il trovatore and other roles there.

Artôt sang in London in 1859-60 and again in 1863 (at Her Majesty's Theatre In 1861, she was briefly engaged to the Welsh harpist John Thomas.

She returned to England in 1864, where she sang at Covent Garden, and 1866, in Gounod's Faust and other roles.

Russia and Tchaikovsky In 1868 she visited Russia with a touring Italian company that also include Roberto Stagno. She captivated Moscow: at a reception for her at the home of Maria Begicheva, the hostess knelt before Artôt and kissed her hand. (Maria Begicheva was the wife of the repertory director of the Moscow state theatres, and the mother, from her first marriage, of one of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's future lovers, Vladimir Shilovsky.)

Désirée Artôt met Tchaikovsky briefly at a party at the Begichevs in the spring. He also visited her after her benefit performance, for which he wrote additional recitatives for a production of Daniel Auber's opera Le domino noir. They again met by chance at a musical party, where she expressed her surprise that he had not visited her more often during the autumn. He promised he would do so, but he did not intend to keep his promise, however Anton Rubinstein persuaded him to see her at the opera. She then started to send him invitations every day, and he became accustomed to visiting her every evening. He had put aside his work on his symphonic poem Fatum in order to give her all his attention. Her mother, who was travelling with her, opposed the marriage. There were three reasons for this: a certain unnamed Armenian man who sat in the front seat at all Artôt's performances, and was in love with her himself, told her mother lies about Tchaikovsky's background and his financial status which, being a stranger to Russian customs, she had no reason to disbelieve; ) On 15 September 1869, either in Sèvres or Warsaw, The second subject of the first movement starts with the notes D flat–A (in German Des–A), which the musicologist David Brown argues is a musical cipher on Artôt's name, Désirée Artôt. The use of initials spelled out in musical pitches is a device often used by Robert Schumann (for example, in his Carnaval), and Tchaikovsky was a great admirer of Schumann's music. The sequence D flat–A is naturally resolved by a B flat, which, according to Brown, determined the overall key of the entire concerto, B flat minor, a very unusual key for a concerto or symphony. The famous opening theme of the first movement is written in the relative major key, D flat major (Des), and after being played twice, it never reappears (perhaps an echo of Artôt's sudden disappearance from his life). The theme is introduced by a descending minor key gesture (F–D flat–C–B flat) on the horns, which might be a reference to Artôt's father, a professor of horn, but is more likely a reference to the composer himself: he used the sequence E–C–B–A as his own signature in other works, and the horn gesture is E–C–B–A transposed from A minor to B flat minor. There are other suggestions that Tchaikovsky coded his own name into the concerto, and Artôt's name into the symphonic poem Fatum, the Symphony No. 3, and the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture. He never revealed the program of Fatum, and later even destroyed the score It was Balakirev who had first suggested Tchaikovsky write a Romeo and Juliet piece, in May 1869 ). The work (in its first version) was completed on 29 November 1869, just two months after Artôt's marriage to Padilla.

On her December 1870 Moscow visit, Tchaikovsky went to hear her as Marguerite in Gounod's Faust. He was reported to have had tears streaming down his cheeks (although he was often moved to tears by music); they did not meet on this occasion. In 1875 she was again in Moscow, singing in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. Calling on Nikolai Rubinstein one day at the Conservatorium, Tchaikovsky and his friend Nikolay Kashkin were asked to wait because "a foreign lady" was with Rubinstein in his office. The foreign lady soon emerged, and it turned out to be Désirée Artôt. Both she and Tchaikovsky were so flustered that they exchanged no words, and she left hurriedly. Tchaikovsky burst out laughing, saying "And I thought I was in love with her!". He wrote in his diary: "This evening is counted among the most agreeable recollections of my sojourn in Berlin. The personality and the art of this singer are as irresistibly bewitching as ever". She appeared in Moscow in 1868-70 and again in 1875-76, and in Saint Petersburg in 1871–72 and 1876–77. She had a tempestuous temperament and her onstage battles with Minnie Hauk in Moscow in the 1870s are well documented.

Artôt retired in 1884, Elisa Kutscherra de Nyss Marie Goetze, and Berglioth Prom. She died in 1907 in Paris (or Berlin), just four months after her husband died.

Artôt's and Padilla's daughter Lola Artôt de Padilla had a highly successful career as an operatic soprano, creating Vreli in Delius's A Village Romeo and Juliet.