Polina Viardo’s birthday at the Spasskoye-Lutovinovo museum

Spasskoye-Lutovinovo. The Turgenev Museum-Reserve hosted a festival of classical music dedicated to Pauline Viardot.

"She has long and forever overshadowed everything else from me… I am only blissful when a woman with a heel steps on my neck and presses my face with her nose into the dirt." La femme fatale Turgenev celebrates 195 years this year. A good occasion to arrange a festival of music in the old estate, inviting many guests to it. There are already a lot of them.

This year, Spasskoye-Lutovinovo entered the top three most famous and visited estates, losing the championship only to “Arkhangelsk” and “Yasnaya Polyana”. Two weeks earlier, during the “Cinema Night”, the museum recalled four adaptations of the novel “Fathers and Sons” and opened an exhibition in honor of Viardot. The works from her repertoire formed the basis of the concert program, in which young vocalists from the Voice and Violin Academy, founded 4 years ago by opera singer Lyubov Kazarnovskaya, performed.

The fate of Turgenev was forever changed by the "Barber of Seville", presented on the tour of the Italian Opera in St. Petersburg. The woman, whose contemporaries gave the most unpleasant characteristics, conquered the writer with her voice and magical charm from the very first minute on the stage. And then - reckless worship, existence within the framework of strange, confused relationships, the inability to arrange your personal life differently, attempts to free oneself, happiness and a series of losses. This amazing lady was admired by many - famous composers, artists, writers. An unusually gifted singer, teacher and composer.

The author of several collections of romances to poems by Russian composers and operettas, the libretto of which was written by Turgenev himself. Guests of the festival were able to not only hear the music that the birthday girl preferred, but also see her photographs, rare editions of the works of Ivan Sergeyevich, books of her husband Louis Viardot at the exhibition.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru