#marie d'agoult

[miieandering]

lore that absolutely no one asked for

[chelleshistorydump]

Ah, yes. Procrastination at its best.

[madamelareinette]

La commédienne exits from here and I hurry to tell you my impressions without retinence or diplomacy. I found her with a devastated face, almost ugly, of a thin and emaciated appearence, not at all a great lady, less intellectual than I thought. She's remained a hour and hasn't said a word of even little significance, she rotates her eyes in a very unpleasant and affected manner and besides this diffuses around herself a je ne sais quoi air of falsehood and malignity. I believe to have conducted myself naturally and in any way more intellectually than her. She was at first quite inihibited, then more and more loose: in short I have to praise myself for my course of action, but I have of her a most detestable opinion (did you know that she does communion?).

Marie d'Agoult's totally unbiased account of Cristina di Belgioioso's first and only visit to her. From a letter to Franz Liszt, 11 May 1840

[elektrischemaidchen]

"Aber von allen gemeinen Fraun / war es Dir nicht zuzutraun/ Lola Montez verzeih ich Dir nie"

Der heutige Blogeintrag widmet sich unserem Song "Nelida" oder - besser gesagt - jener Lola Montez, die nicht nur der Nagel zum Sarg in der Beziehung von Franz Liszt und Marie D'Agoult gewesen ist, sondern auch der der Regentschaft von Ludwig I. von Bayern.

Und bei letzterem haben wir sie auch das erste Mal kennengelernt. Die Spanierin, die keine war, sondern Irin, die zu Lebenszeiten kein perfektes Spanisch sprach, was aber kaum jemand aufgefallen zu sein schien, machte sie doch fehlende Sprachkenntnisse durch ihr Temperament und ihren eigenartigen feurigen Tanzstil einfach dem Erdboden gleich. Es gibt viele Geschichten über Lola. Sehr viele. Nicht alle sind wahr, aber man mag vermuten, dass die aufbrausende, zickige und stolze Lola wahrscheinlich schon nicht die einfachste Dame unter der Sonne war. Und es dürfte ihr gefallen, dass ihr Image (Reitgerte, Polizisten ohrfeigen, auf Tischen tanzen usw) noch heute alle Register eines perfekten Marketings spiegelt. Ihre eigenartige wie sinnliche Tanzart (wie z.B. später ihr "Signature"- Spinnentanz), die uns heute wahrscheinlich extrem harmlos vorkommen würde, aber zu ihrer Zeit der Gipfel der Verruchtheit war,  war genauso ihr Markenzeichen, wie der Skandal mit dem bayerischen alten König, der zur Staatsräson wurde.

Und dann begegnen wir ihr wieder, in Liszts Biografie. Denn noch lange bevor Lola sich Ludwig zum Untertan gemacht hat, 1844, kursieren Gerüchte über eine Affaire mit Franz in Dresden. Der - so will es die Legende - dem Hotelier Geld zugesteckt hat, um Lola für eine gewisse Zeit im Hotelzimmer  einzusperren, damit er weit genug flüchten kann.. und auch um die Möbel zu bezahlen, die sie in einem Wutausbruch zertrümmern würde. Für diese Legende gibt es keinerlei Quellen, aber die Skandalmeldungen der damaligen Zeitungen waren Grund genug, dass Liszts Lebensgefährtin (und Mutter seiner 3 Kinder) endgültig das Handtuch warf. Affairen okay, aber bei der Montez hörte der Spass auf.

Später schrieb Marie einen fiktiven Roman über ihre Zeit mit Liszt, Nélida, den sie unter dem Namen Daniel Stern veröffentlichte und der Liszt (trotz anderweitiger Aussagen in Briefen an seine Freunde) sehr zugesetzt haben muss.

Und wir können Marie irgendwie verstehen. Denn als wir das erste Mal von Lola in der (tollen!!!) Liszt-Biographie von Burger lasen, war auch unser erster Gedanke: "Franz. Echt jetzt. Kannste nicht bringen. Nicht Lola, ey."

Auch auf ihrem Bildnis in der Nymphenburger Schönheitengalerie fanden wir Lola, vielleicht ob ihres "resting bitch- faces", schon immer suspekt (und in der Galerie ist auch Charlotte von Hagn dabei, die Liszt wahrscheinlich auch getackert hat! Die war hot! Und die Sedlmayer!) ...und wenn man sich so die späteren Fotos von ihr ansieht, naja. Lola halt.

Dabei haben wir echt versucht,  Lola zu verstehen. Marita Krauss' Buch über sie gelesen. Besser wurde es nicht. Belassen wir es dabei. Der Songtext hat sich auf jeden Fall fast selbst geschrieben,  das passiert selten.

Echt Franz, ey.

[foxynovacoda]

For anyone interested, this is a list with the dates of birth and death of some classical composers' children (I'll probably make more)

[franzliszt-official]

Hello Mr Liszt :) I hope your Wednesday is going well, I have some questions so this might be quite long. I was reading these letters:

and I was wondering if you remember why you and Marie were upset with Sand and Chopin? I’ve read before that George came and visited you and Marie in Switzerland and flirted a little too much and that this created jealousy and hatred between her and Marie. Also that your attempts at peacekeeping led everyone to blame you for the situation anyway. But I thought this was a while before Chopin’s 1841 concert… were George and Marie still trying to one up each other?

Also, was it that you were annoyed with Chopin but didn’t wish him ill health, or were you genuinely trying to steal his thunder by going up on stage? I’m finding it all very confusing, especially the reasoning behind the ‘spiteful’ article, so if you can shed light on what was going on I’d be very very very very grateful!

Sorry about how long this is, I’ve made the writing extra small!

Very sincerely

—Pim

Good day.

Such things are long gone and deserve no space in what remains of us in posterity.

These were petty, mundane affairs and deserve not to be remembered.

The press only deteriorated things and drove us to further useless, vulgare mind games.

It's all long gone.

And, Chopin had no thunder to be stolen in the first place >:)

[venicepearl]

Marie Cathérine Sophie, Comtesse d'Agoult (née de Flavigny; 31 December 1805 – 5 March 1876), was a French romantic author and historian, known also by her pen name, Daniel Stern.

[feliscatussohn]

I was researching Marie d'agoult before I was hit with the sudden realization. i.

looks a lot like

HEinrich Heine?? yea i think that i should go to sleep too

[helpiminahotairballoon]

1837 watercolour showing George Sand (1804-1876) and countess Marie d'Agoult (1805-1876) in an opera box, by Mathilde Odier née de Laborde (1815-1904).

[wrongnote-lc]

[ Irrevocable Times ]

20th century AU of Liszt, Chopin, and Sand

(Marie D'agoult is there too even though it's not drawn on the artwork)

[plunderherz]

I wrote a few days ago that I am currently researching Adèle de la Prunarède. And I've actually found something. Something really cool. This post will be extremely long.

I always found it strange that you could find less about a woman who obviously had a reputation and was also a duchess than about my relatively boring peasant ancestors from the Polish hinterland. I haven't worked professionally in the historical sector for a long time, but I do a lot of genealogical research for myself and others...and sometimes the search for clues gets to me ;) I simply love it.

Besides, there seem to be only two pictures of her. A portrait and a miniature. The latter belonged to Liszt and is now in the Liszt Museum in Bayreuth:

There is always the same information about Adèle in Liszt biographies, most of which quote Lina Ramann (sometimes even word for word): ‘But in the Parisian salons Cupid was the charming, the flirting, and seldom the ‘terrible god!’ as Theocritus called him; his arrows did not always cling and wounded, and they struck only a few fatally. One of them, however, stuck more firmly than the others. It came from the witty and coquettish Comtesse Adèle Laprunarède (née de Chelèrd), the future Duchesse de Fleury, who sought to compensate herself in the elegant circles of the faubourg Saint Germain for the boredom she might feel in the country at the side of the already very aged Count, her husband-and she was still so young, so beautiful, so full of life, so esprit-talented!

It was not this arrow, it is true, but it was firm enough for a winter's length to lure him away from Paris to the castle-like castle in the Alps, where she lived with the count. Here he spent several months, probably a whole winter, alone with him and his young wife, as well as with an aunt of the latter, who was already old—a double prisoner. For not only did the fiery eyes, the coquettish, cheerful manner, and the literary and educated spirit of the Countess Laprunaréde hold him under their spell, but outside the weather was stormy, the winds howled, and the snow fell in masses. All the roads were covered with snow, and the inhabitants of the castle lived out of reach of others, like fairytale princes and princesses in an enchanted palace stared at ice, and waited for the spring whose warm breath was to unlock its closed doors. Inside, however, it was secret. The fireside crackled and crackled, and its sparks mingled with the sparkling verbal battles that sprang from golden youthfulness and sparkling fires of love. – They laughed, joked, read, made music. And when the approaching spring kissed snow and ice away from doors and streets, the young artist wandered back to Paris, his heart filled with the romance of love.An eager correspondence now developed between him and the countess—Liszt's first "higher stylistic exercises in the French language," as he later jokingly called it to us. In Paris, however, nothing was known of this tête-a-tête. His heroes preserved the deepest silence—the veil of sweet mystery."

Didn't @franzliszt-official himself dictate this to her beautifully? ;)

Other sources also state that Adèle was 15 years older than Liszt and that it was she who made him a man.

Unfortunately, I can't say anything about the latter (a pity really ;)), but I can say something about her date of birth. According to Généalogie 62 / Généalogie de la Famille Quarre, Adèle Joséphine Vivante Quarre de Chelers was born on 1st February 1808 in Chelers, Pas-de-Calais. That makes her 3 years older than Franz, but that's probably not as wicked as 15 ;) Her father has been a "Capitaine au 2ème Régiment de Carabiniers", her mother an English lady.

Then she married Fulcrand Henri Marie Eugène de Benoist de la Prunarède in 1827, who was 47 when Franz entered the winterly scene in Marlioz, which makes him not exactly as "elderly" as described by anyone else.

Then we meet Adèle again and again in the correspondence between Franz and Marie D'Agoult. Marie receives all the old letters that were exchanged between him and Adèle. Franz often has to justify himself. The de Laprunarède always hangs in the air between them, and at first I always thought: ‘My goodness, Marie, give it a rest now.’ In between, Ad��le also turns up in Geneva, there's a juicy story about a riding crop and, at the end, Marie realises with satisfaction that Franz thinks she's somehow got fat.

That was the basis. And then I started searching both at Gallica and in the BNF's main archive. I found a court session from 1848 that left me open-mouthed. I then rang my French friend and asked her if I had understood everything correctly. I did. The whole text can be found here.

And I would like to sincerely apologise to Marie. This is way more than ‘Uh, you banged my boy, I'm jealous.’ Here's the short summary: Adéle was adopted and very protected as a young lady to maintain her market value. Unfortunately, she's young, rich and stubborn and has countless boyfriends. People in the background try to iron out all her escapades, they have to burn her letters and silence others. Then she marries her ‘elderly’ husband, who holds a position at court, and continues to cheat on him, largely undetected, until she accidentally becomes pregnant. Shortly before this, her aunt ( It's an aunt in the Liszt biographies. Probably the same person. Seems like she adopted Adèle.)) has moved in with the couple. In 1836, Adéle then pretends to go to a convent and stays there for a few months until she secretly gives birth in Venice. She then travels around the country with her aunt/mother, writes cheerfully to her husband, postponing her return again and again until she blackmails him, saying she will only come back if he adopts the child and they pretend together that it is his brother's daughter.

Real history is sometimes more awesome than any novel. That was a thrilling read! And since the world at that time was very small (it really was. So many connections everywhere!), I can well imagine that Franz and Marie also knew more than their correspondence reveals...

And the whole negotiation continues to escalate and becomes more and more obscure. It is clear that her husband then no longer felt like it, but he needed her money ;) Since June 1848, the two have been separated. After the death of her husband, she got Marlioz back because she made a clever marriage contract. By the way, my next step is to search the registers of Saconnez (now Saconnex) for her daughter Isidora de Faulat.

And if someone needs help with their genealogy, say something. I'm a freak. ;) I do it for free and have a lot of fun doing it. ;)

@scourgiez I am back with lots of sources...xD

[chopinski-official]

Wait Pleyel's wife was also Marie? How many Marie's were in Franz's bed? Marie D'Agoult, Marie Pleyel, Marie Duplessis, and in the afterlife even @marie-schneider .

His mother's name is also Marie. Is that Marie's curse?

Sounds more like an Oedipus complex to me. Anything to add, @franzliszt-official?

[fallen-angel-adam-frankenstein]

Are you a normal fucking human being or do you also ship the Fryderyk Chopin-George Sand-Franz Liszt-Marie d'Agoult polycule?

[fernald-frobisher]

"It is an ultimate and harsh ordeal, but my love is my faith and I thirst for martyrdom."

- Marie d'Agoult in a letter (31st of May 1835) to Franz Liszt

[elektrischemaidchen]

Better than fan fiction: Franz being Franz again, Chopin has to listen to "I can't control my libido" over and over again, while Marie D'Agoult is jealous of...Chopin.

And Berlioz sits next to Franz and cries, while he was writing this letter...

I'm beginning to realise why all of this has become too much for you, @chopinski-official , really. 🙈