Désirée Artôt (French: [deziʁe aʁto]; 21 July 1835[1] – 3 April 1907) was a Belgian soprano (initially a mezzo-soprano), who was famed in German and Italian opera and sang mainly in Germany.
In 1868 she was engaged, briefly, to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky,[2][3] who may have coded her name into works such as his First Piano Concerto and the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture.
He had been born Alexandre Joseph (or Joseph-Alexandre[4]) Montagney, but adopted the surname Artôt professionally, and the rest of his family followed suit.
Giacomo Meyerbeer engaged her for the Paris Opéra, where she made her debut on 5 February 1858 as Fidès in his Le prophète, to great success.
Her favourite part was "The Daughter of the Regiment," for which opera, in order to be quite realistic, she had studied the side-drum for some months, and used to play it herself in the first act as efficiently as any professional drummer.
[10] She captivated Moscow: at a reception for her at the home of Maria Begicheva, the hostess knelt before Artôt and kissed her hand.
[11] (Maria Begicheva was the wife of the repertory director of the Moscow state theatres, and the mother, from her first marriage, of one of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's future lovers, Vladimir Shilovsky.)
He also visited her after her benefit performance, for which he wrote additional recitatives for a production of Daniel Auber's opera Le domino noir.
[10] It seems plausible that Tchaikovsky was more captivated in her as a singer and actor than as a romantic interest, and had difficulty in separating the artist from the person.
Some of Tchaikovsky's friends, such as Nikolai Rubinstein, advised him against the marriage because being the husband of a foreign singing celebrity would mean he would have to forgo his own musical career.
[15] The matter was left undecided, and no formal announcement was made, but they planned to meet again in the summer of 1869 at her estate near Paris[11] to finalise the question of their marriage.
[11] Although she did not communicate this fact to Tchaikovsky, as the social conventions of the time would have demanded, Artôt also changed her mind.
[16]) On 15 September 1869, either in Sèvres[17][18] or Warsaw,[10][11][13][15] Artôt married a member of her company, the Spanish baritone Mariano Padilla y Ramos.
1 in B-flat minor in 1874, he included in the slow movement the tune of a popular French song Il faut s’amuser et rire, which Artôt had in her repertoire.
[23] He never revealed the program of Fatum, and later even destroyed the score[22] (although it was reconstructed from the orchestral parts and published posthumously as Op. 77).
When I play it I imagine you are lying naked in your bath and that the Artôt-Padilla herself is washing your stomach with hot lather from scented soap".
[11] In December 1887, she had a chance encounter with Tchaikovsky in Berlin, at a performance of Berlioz's Grande Messe des morts, and they were glad to renew their acquaintance,[10] but there was no mention of past events.
Artôt appeared with Padilla in Italian opera in Germany, Austria, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Russia,[4] and Finland.
Her students included the contralto Rosa Olitzka,[30] Elisa Kutscherra de Nyss[31] and Berglioth Prom.