Présentation de l'éditeur
Born in 1808, Maria Malibran was one of the most beautiful and accomplished opera singers of her day. Those who attended her performances were enraptured, ecstatic; she was mobbed by screaming fans like any twentieth century pop star. Yet her influence went further, for, more than any of her contemporaries on the stage, she personified the moods and aspirations of the Romantic Age, and she became the muse of poets, novelists and painters. From the moment of her death in 1836 - at the age of 28 - she was deified; she became an idealised figure, with no apparent human failings. Existing biographies of La Malibran tend to perpetuate the myths that have surrounded her. April FitzLyon has sought instead to explore the reality behind the cult of the superstar: the sad catalogue of incest, bigamy, hysteria and unwanted pregnancies that shadowed her career. She was, in the context of the time, a doubly disadvantaged person: an actress, and a woman; a goddess on the stage, fêted by her public, an outcast off it, received as little more than a servant into the salons of Paris. The continual struggle to placate her audiences and balance her public and private lives made her a victim of her very success. Like many modern superstars, she cracked under the strain and her death, although apparently the result of an accident was the only possible solution to her problems. Using much unpublished material, this readable and carefully researched biography exposes La Malibran's personal life for the first time, described her impact on French literature and explores the phenomenon of her cult. It also provides an absorbing study of the period: an age of revolution, emotion and free expression with, nonetheless, its underlying code of rigid morality. Seen as the tragic figure she was, La Malibran's brilliance as singer and actress remains untarnished, but her very human vulnerability highlights the heavy price that must be paid for meteoric success.
Biographie de l'auteur
April FitzLyon is the author of two highly acclaimed biographies, 'Lorenzo de Ponte,' and 'The Prince of Genius,' about the singer Pauline Viardot, younger sister of Maria Malibran and lifelong friend and inspiration of the Russian Novelist, Ivan Turgenev. She contributed a number of articles to the 'New Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians' and both organised and wrote part of the catalogue for the Turgenev exhibition of 1983, 'A Month in the Country,' which appeared at the Victoria and Albert Museum. A translator from Russia and French, she also contributes to several literary magazines, including 'The Times Literary Supplement,' 'London Magazine' and 'Literary Review'. She and her husband, the writer and critic Kyril FitzLyon, live in London.
