Teresa Carreño is a well-known name in Venezuela. However, other than associating the name with arts and culture, few know much about her.

Born in Venezuela, she played piano for European and American eminences and twice in the White House: once for Abraham Lincoln and the next time for Woodrow Wilson. 

In prior posts, including the recent series on ranchitos, you will have noticed the many terrible wars and rebellions in 19th-century Venezuela. This had undeniable effect on Venezuelan society. Perhaps the story of one young girl and her eventual triumphs and failures will help put “flesh and blood” on aspects of such effect.

This post is a translation of a biographical sketch first published by the BBC a few years ago:

Teresa Carreño was barely 9 years old when, in the fall of 1863, she was invited to play the piano for then-president Abraham Lincoln.

The Venezuelan pianist returned to the White House in the winter of 1916 to offer a Christmas recital in honor of President Woodrow Wilson.

Between the first and the second concert 53 years had passed.

In that period, Carreño developed a successful musical career as performer, composer, and singer, which led her to make numerous international tours and to meet or collaborate with maestros such as Gustav Mahler, under whose direction she played with the New York Philharmonic Society.

A child prodigy, her professional trajectory took international flight, driven by wars and exile.

“Girl Genius”

Born in Caracas in 1853, in the bosom of a musical family — her grandfather was a well-known composer of sacred music –, Carreño gave evidence of great artistic sensibility from a very early age.

This caused her father, Manuel Antonio Carreño, to begin piano lessons and to assign complex exercises which permitted her to develop her abilities.

By 1861, little Teresa was considered to be a “girl genius” and had composed numerous short pieces for the piano, including eight waltzes, three dances, and two polkas.

However, the deterioration of the political situation in her native Venezuela — where her father was minister of the Treasury of a government facing a civil war — drove her family into exile in the United States in 1862, where another civil war was raging.

That very same year, at 8 years old, the young pianist debuted in New York City, where she was hailed by the public as a “musical phenomenon.”

“She deserves to be classified, not as a girl wonder, who at the age of 8 years has mastered all the technical difficulties of the piano, but as an artist with a first level sensibility,” wrote the musical critic of The New York Times.

Her talent greatly impressed the American composer, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who in that time was considered one of the best pianists in the New World, and who became — for a brief time — the girl’s first professor in New York.

After her successful performances in the Big Apple, Carreño initiated her first tour in the United States, including the private concert she offered to President Lincoln in the White House, in which she played several compositions by Gottschalk as well as one of the president’s favorite songs, “Listen to the Mocking Bird.”

Teachers, Friends, and Influences

Her stay in New York does not last long. In 1866, the family traveled to the other side of the Atlantic and settled in Paris, where Carreño performed her European debut.

During her first weeks in the City of Light, the young lady [12 years old] met musicians such as Gioachino Rossini, creator of universal operas such as The Barber of Seville, and the Hungarian composer, Franz Liszt, who offered to give her musical lessons, which she declined.

She did study with Georges Mathias, who had studied under Frédéric Chopin and whose lessons served to make the Polish composer Carreño’s favorite.

During a tour of London, the Venezuelan pianist met Anton Rubinstein, ex-tutor of Tchaikovsky, who became friend as well as an important musical influence to her.

But the artistic career of the Venezuelan in Europe also took other paths.

Carreño was blessed with a beautiful mezzosoprano voice which was discovered by Rossini, who gave her singing lessons which became useful in exploiting another facet of her musical talent: operatic interpretation.

In 1872, in Edinburg on a concert tour, a soprano who was to interpret the role of the queen of Navarra in the opera, The Huguenots, fell ill and Carreño, who had never sung in public, substituted for her.

“In four days she learned the difficult role and performed in the opera with great success,” wrote The New York Times critic in 1916.

Shortly after that episode, Carreño returned to live in the United States, where she continued to perform for several years as singer in roles such as Zerlina in Don Giovanni.

Personal Difficulties

During her first stay in Europe, in 1873, Carreño married the violinist, Emile Sauret, which whom she had a daughter, Emilita, whom the couple left in the care of a German friend in order to continue touring to meet their professional commitments.

Then, a series of problems hit the pianist: the tour failed, she suffered the loss of a second pregnancy, her marriage with Sauret ended in divorce, and her father died in France, which left her in a difficult financial situation prohibiting her from providing for the care of Emilita, who ended up being adopted by the family of her German friend.

She returned to the United States, where she met the Italian baritone, Giovanni Tagliapietra, whom she married in 1876. The couple had three children, but the marriage also ended in divorce in 1889.

The Valkyrie of the Piano

Towards the end of 1889, Carreño returned to the Old Continent to settle in Berlin. 

There, that same year, she married the pianist and composer Eugen D’Albert, with whom she had two daughters in a marriage that lasted only three years.

In Europe, Carreño toured several times through Germany, Russia, and other European countries and met the Norwegian Composer, Edward Grieg, and she becomes a proponent of his works.

In Germany, she is named “The Valkyrie of the Piano” and “the lion of the keyboard,” because of her strong, impetuous style interpreting compositions.

This was one of the characteristics for which she was known since childhood, when the critics reported that the strength with which she played the piano was like that of an adult male.

“It is difficult to adequately express what all musicians sensed in the presence of this great woman who looked like a queen among the pianists and played like a goddess,” wrote Henry Woods, director and founder of the London Summer Concerts which are now known last the BBC Proms.

“Her masculine vigor in tone and touch and her marvelous precision in execution excite the world,” he added.

With the passing of the year, however, Carreño began playing with a different type of energy.

After her death, a critic writing for The New York Times highlighted how the Venezuelan pianist had changed throughout the course of her career.

“I remember her as young, and, now, after all these years, it was a pleasure to sit and hear her play again,” he wrote.

“When I heard her recently, it seemed to me that the woman with the kind face and the gray hair played in a way that was much more artistic than how she had played when she was a young woman with a more passionate mood,” he added.

Carreño fell ill in Cuba, when she was about to initiate a tour through South America in March, 1917. She died in June of that year in her apartment in Manhattan, where she lived with her fourth husband, Arturo Tagliapietra, the brother of her second husband, Giovanni Tagliapietra.

Her last concerts in the United States were in Carnegie Hall, where between 1897 and 1916 she gave 32 performances, according to research done by the historian, Anna E. Kijas, of Tufts University (Massachusetts), creator of Documenting Teresa Carreño, a digital project which gathered numerous materials and primary sources about this Venezuelan.

Throughout her career, Carreño offered over 5,000 concerts and composed over 70 original musical pieces.

And, in all those years, she returned to Venezuela only twice. The first time, in 1885, for a recital tour. The second, in 1887, when she had planned to direct an opera company, which ended in failure.

She was cremated and, in 1938, her ashes were sent to Caracas, where they now rest in the National Pantheon.

Since the beginning of the 1980’s, Venezuela’s most modern theater bears her name.

Link to the original article.
https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-51451987