Emma Calvé
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
.
Calvé was probably the most famous French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
female opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
singer of the Belle Époque
Belle Époque
The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque was a period in European social history that began during the late 19th century and lasted until World War I. Occurring during the era of the French Third Republic and the German Empire, it was a period characterised by optimism and new technological and medical...
. Hers was an international career, and she sang regularly and to considerable acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
House, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and the Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
, Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. She possessed a potent stage presence and was noted for her acting ability, stormy personality, and dramatic intensity. Contemporary accounts of her voice describe it as extraordinary, with a first-rate technique.
Early life
Calvé was born in DecazevilleDecazeville
Decazeville is a commune in the Aveyron department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in southern France.The commune was created in the 19th century because of the Industrial Revolution and was named after the Duke of Decazes , the founder of the factory that created the town.-History:The town is built...
, Aveyron
Aveyron
Aveyron is a département in southern France named after the Aveyron River.- History :Aveyron is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790....
. Her father, Justin Calvet, was a civil engineer. She spent her childhood at first in Spain with her parents, then in diverse convent schools between Roquefort and Tournemire (Aveyron). After her parents separated, she moved with her mother to Paris. There she attempted to enter the Paris Conservatory
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...
, while she studied the art of singing under Jules Puget.
After her debut at the Brussels La Monnaie
La Monnaie
Le Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie , or the Koninklijke Muntschouwburg is a theatre in Brussels, Belgium....
, she took lessons in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
from the celebrated teacher Mathilde Marchesi
Mathilde Marchesi
Mathilde Marchesi was a German mezzo-soprano, a renowned teacher of singing, and a proponent of the bel canto vocal method.-Biography:...
, a retired German mezzo-soprano and student of Manuel García
Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García
Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García , was a Spanish singer, music educator, and vocal pedagogue.-Biography:García was born on 17 March 1805 in the town of Zafra in Badajoz Province, Spain. His father was singer and teacher Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodriguez García...
. She made a tour of Italy, where she saw the famous actress Eleonora Duse
Eleonora Duse
-Life and career:Duse was born in Vigevano, Lombardy, and began acting as a child. Both her father and her grandfather were actors, and she joined the troupe at age four. Due to poverty, she initially worked continually, traveling from city to city with whichever troupe her family was currently...
, whose impersonations made a deep impression on the young singer. She trained herself in stage craft and gesture by closely observing Duse's performances.
Career
Her operatic debut occurred in 1882 in GounodCharles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
's Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
at Brussels' La Monnaie
La Monnaie
Le Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie , or the Koninklijke Muntschouwburg is a theatre in Brussels, Belgium....
; later she sang at La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
, in Milan, and also at the principal theatres of Naples, Rome, and Florence.
Returning to Paris in 1891, she created the part of Suzel in L'Amico Fritz
L'amico Fritz
L'amico Fritz is an opera in three acts by Pietro Mascagni, premiered in 1891 from a libretto by P. Suardon , based on the French novel L'ami Fritz by Émile Erckmann and Pierre-Alexandre Chatrian.While the opera enjoyed some success in its day and is probably Mascagni's most famous work after...
by Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...
, playing and singing the role later at Rome. Because of her great success in it, she was chosen to originate the role of Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana
Cavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
, which was viewed as one of her greatest parts. She repeated her success in it in London.
Her next triumph was Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
's Carmen. Before beginning the study of this part, she went to Spain, learned the Spanish dances, mingled with the people and patterned her characterization after the cigarette girls whom she watched at their work and at play. In 1894, she made her appearance in the role at the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
, Paris. The city's opera-goers immediately hailed her as the greatest Carmen that had ever appeared, a verdict other cities would later echo. She had had many famous predecessors in the role , including Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti was a highly acclaimed 19th-century opera singer, earning huge fees at the height of her career in the music capitals of Europe and America. She first sang in public as a child in 1851 and gave her last performance before an audience in 1914...
, Minnie Hauk and Célestine Galli-Marié, but critics and musicians agreed that in Calvé they had found their ideal of Bizet's cigarette girl of Seville. Her many charms of voice, figure, and personality combined to make it one of the most brilliant impersonations ever given in opera.
Calvé first appeared in America in the season of 1893–1894 as Mignon
Mignon
Mignon is an opéra comique in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The Italian version was translated by Giuseppe Zaffira. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce's The Dead,...
and her reception then and ever afterward was flattering. She would make regular visits to the country, both in grand opera and in concert tours. She created the part of Anita, which was written for her, in Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...
's La Navarraise
La Navarraise
La Navarraise is an opera in one act by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Jules Claretie and Henri Cain, based on Claretie's novel La Cigarette...
in London, in 1894, and sang Sapho, in an opera written by the same composer.
She also sang Ophélie in Ambroise Thomas
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas was a French composer, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet and as Director of the Conservatoire de Paris from 1871 till his death.-Biography:"There is good music, there is bad music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas."- Emmanuel Chabrier-Early life...
's Hamlet
Hamlet (opera)
Hamlet is an opéra in five acts by the French composer Ambroise Thomas, with a libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier based on a French adaptation by Alexandre Dumas, père and Paul Meurice of Shakespeare's play Hamlet.- Ophelia mania in Paris:...
in Paris in 1899, but the part was not suited to her and she dropped it. She also appeared with success in many roles, among them, as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
, the title role in Félicien David's Lalla Rookh, as Pamina in The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
, and as Camille in Hérold's Zampa
Zampa
Zampa, ou La fiancée de marbre is an opéra comique in three acts by French composer Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold...
, but she is best known as Carmen.
Calvé developed an interest in the paranormal
Paranormal
Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...
and was once engaged to the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
author Jules Bois
Calvé died in 1942 at Montpellier
Montpellier
-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....
, Hérault
Hérault
Hérault is a department in the south of France named after the Hérault river.-History:Hérault is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...
, and is buried in Millau
Millau
Millau is a commune in the Aveyron department in southern France. It is located at the confluence of the Tarn and Dourbie rivers.-History:...
. Her voice, however, is preserved in a number of recordings made between 1902 and 1920. These are available on CD transfers.
In the winter of 1893-1894 the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury
Adolfo Müller-Ury
Adolfo Muller-Ury was a Swiss-born American portrait painter and impressionistic painter of roses and still life.-Heritage and early life in Switzerland:...
(1862-1947) executed a life-size portrait of her standing full-length in a green-blue dress, wearing an opera cloak of white and gold with a sable edge, clutching American Beauty roses. It is now lost, as is a pastel he made of her in March 1894.
Swami Vivekananda's influence
Swami VivekanandaSwami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda , born Narendranath Dutta , was the chief disciple of the 19th century mystic Ramakrishna Paramahansa and the founder of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission...
no doubt had a lasting influence on Emma Calvé. In the words of Calvé herself "(He) 'truly walked with God, a noble being, a saint, a philosopher and a true friend. His
influence upon my spiritual life was profound... my soul will bear him eternal gratitude'.
Emma Calvé also visited Belur Math
Belur Math
' or Belur Mutt is the headquarters of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission, founded by Swami Vivekananda, a chief disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. It is located on the west bank of Hooghly River, Belur, West Bengal, India and is one of the significant institutions in Calcutta...
- Swami Vivekananda's tribute to his guru Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa. She said about this visit and her association with the monks there -The hours that I spent with these gentle philosophers have remained in my memory as a time apart. These beings — pure, beautiful and remote seemed to belong to another universe, a better and wiser world'
There is some doubt as to when she first met Swami Vivekananda. Some feel it was in 1894 in Chicago. Others think it was in 1899, during his second visit to the west. She has left a couple of reminscences of the Swami. Calvé along with Swami Vivekananda and Monsieur Charles Loyson (formerly Pere Hyacinthe) and his wife, Monsieur Jules Bois, and Miss Josephine MacLeod visited Europe in 1900. They together visited Paris, Vienna, Constantinopole, Hungary, Serbia, Egypt.
Swami Vivekananda wrote of Calvé:
'She was born poor but by her innate talents, prodigious labour and diligence, and after wrestling against much hardship, she is now enormously rich and commands respect from kings and emperors....The rare combination of beauty, youth, talents, and "divine" voice has assigned Calve the highest place among the singers of the West. There is, indeed, no better teacher than misery and poverty. That constant fight against the dire poverty, misery, and hardship of the days of her girlhood, which has led to her present triumph over them, has brought into her life a unique sympathy and a depth of thought with a wide outlook.'
Emma had the pleasure of meeting Swami Vivekananda during one of her U.S. tours. She seems to have been quite impressed by the Swami's abilities and remained a friend and admirer through her life. She speaks about him for several pages in her autobiography "My Life" ( pages 185-194) which is surprising as she does not give too many other people this much attention in her book. She doesn't talk about Jules Bois at all, and he is acknowledged in many circles as being very close to Emma for a considerable length of time.
Swami Vivekananda, the lifelong ascetic, probably had infinite compassion for his somewhat eccentric but extremely talented "friend" who rose from so much poverty to so much eminence and in many ways who was completely an anti thesis to him (he being a man of complete renunciation and she being a symbol of materialistic world). She needed help - spiritual and emotional during her most troubled time and the great monk took her under his protective wings.
The story of the first meeting of Swami Vivekananda and Madame Emma Calvé, as told in Calvé’s autobiography, My Life -
Swami Vivekananda was lecturing in Chicago one year when I was there; and as I was at that time greatly depressed in mind and body, I decided to go to him.
. . . Before going I had been told not to speak until he addressed me. When I entered the room, I stood before him in silence for a moment. He was seated in a noble attitude of meditation, his robe of saffron yellow falling in straight lines to the floor, his head swathed in a turban bent forward, his eyes on the ground. After a pause he spoke without looking up.
"My child", he said, "what a troubled atmosphere you have about you. Be calm. It is essential".
Then in a quiet voice, untroubled and aloof, this man who did not even know my name talked to me of my secret problems and anxieties. He spoke of things that I thought were unknown even to my nearest friends. It seemed miraculous, supernatural.
"How do you know all this?" I asked at last. "Who has talked of me to you?"
He looked at me with his quiet smile as though I were a child who had asked a foolish question.
"No one has talked to me", he answered gently. "Do you think that it is necessary? I read in you as in an open book."
Finally it was time for me to leave.
"You must forget", he said as I rose. "Become gay and happy again. Build up your health. Do not dwell in silence upon your sorrows. Transmute your emotions into some form of external expression. Your spiritual health requires it. Your art demands it."
I left him deeply impressed by his words and his personality. He seemed to have emptied my brain of all its feverish complexities and placed there instead his clear and calming thoughts. I became once again vivacious and cheerful, thanks to the effect of his powerful will. He did not use any of the hypnotic or mesmeric influences. It was the strength of his character, the purity and intensity of his purpose that carried conviction. It seemed to me, when I came to know him better, that he lulled one's chaotic thoughts into a state of peaceful acquiescence, so that one could give complete and undivided attention to his words.
Works
- Calvé, Emma: "My Life", Appleton. 1922.
- Calvé, Emma: "Sous tous les ciels, j'ai chanté", Plon, Montréal 1940; (1940; "I've Sung Under Every Sky") : autobiography.
Chronological table
- 1858 Birth of Rosa Emma Calvet in Decazeville.
- 1864 She attends a convent in Rodez. The sisters give some concerts where Mgr Bourret, bishop of this town appreciates her voice.
- 1874 Emma and her mother Léonie go up to Paris. Although they are short of money, Puget consents to give Emma lessons.
- 1882 Debut at the Brussels La Monnaie, as Marguerite in Charles Gounod's Faust. Lessons by Mrs Marchesi, one of the most influential voice teachers of the era.
- 1882 fin, Théodore Dubois' Aben Hamet in the Théâtre-Italien. 1883 She creates Victorin Joncières' Le Chevalier Jean in the Opéra-Comique. She sings in Zampa and Lalla-Roukh. After a failure at the Scala, recommended by Gounod, she took lessons from Rosine Laborde. In Rome she took lessons from Domenico MustafàDomenico MustafaDomenico Mustafà was an Italian castrato singer, composer and choir director. He was born in the comune of Sellano, province of Perugia....
(1829 -1912). - 1885 nov., in Nice she sings the part of Leïla in Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de perles with a grand success. She sings Halévy's L'éclairL'éclairL'éclair is an opéra comique by Fromental Halévy to a libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges.L'éclair was premiered by the Paris Opéra-Comique at the Salle de la Bourse on 16 December 1835; Jacques Offenbach was a cellist in the orchestra...
. - 1888 May. Milan. Triumph in the Scala with Hamlet.
- 1890 She creates Cavalleria rusticana in Florence. She sings in Rome, then in Naples.
- 1891 November: she sang the French premiere of Cavalleria rusticana at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.
- 1892 Travel in Spain; November: great success in Carmen at the Opéra-Comique.
- 1893 Carmen in London's Covent Garden, and in Windsor by Queen Victoria. September: she leaves for the United States. Carmen in the Metropolitan OperaMetropolitan OperaThe Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
in New York, then in Boston, Chicago and Montreal. - 1894 July: she buys the medieval castle of CabrièresCabrièresCabrières is the name or part of the name of several communes in France:* Cabrières, Gard, in the Gard department* Cabrières, Hérault, in the Hérault department* Cabrières-d'Aigues, in the Vaucluse department...
in the Causses. - 1895 October: she creates Massenet's La Navarraise in Paris; Tour in Russia: Sankt-Petersburg, performance in front of the tsar.
- 1896 November: creation of Massenet's Sapho, with a libretto from a novel of Alphonse Daudet.
- 1899-1900 Travel in Orient along with Swami VivekanandaSwami VivekanandaSwami Vivekananda , born Narendranath Dutta , was the chief disciple of the 19th century mystic Ramakrishna Paramahansa and the founder of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission...
- 1902 She creates in the Opéra-Comique Reynaldo HahnReynaldo HahnReynaldo Hahn was a Venezuelan, naturalised French, composer, conductor, music critic and diarist. Best known as a composer of songs, he wrote in the French classical tradition of the mélodie....
's La Carmélite. - 1903 April: Hector BerliozHector BerliozHector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's La Damnation de Faust. - 1904 October: in the Gaîté, Massenet's Hérodiade.
- 1906 Germany and Austria
- 1910-1912 Travel around the world
- 1914 July: Berlin December: 4th tour in the United States
- 1915 USA
- 1916 Benefit concerts in Montpellier, Marseille, Toulon, Nice and CannesCannesCannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
, for the Croix-rouge. - 1919 For the last time in the Opéra-Comique. English tour with tenor Vladimir Rosing and pianist Arthur Rubinstein.
- 1920 She records for Pathé.
- 1922 Tour in England, Scotland and Ireland, with Alfred Cortot and Jacques Thibaud.
- 1925 5th tour in the USA.
- 1925 She retired from the stage. She returned in her beloved Midi to teach, living in different houses in Millau and surroundings.
- 1942 6 January - dies in a clinic in Montpellier, aged 83.
Discography
- in Les Introuvables du Chant Français EMI, 2005;
- Emma Calve: the Complete Victor Recordings (1907-16), Romophone CD 81024-2.