Vera Nimidoff

Vera Nimidoff (1879–1963) was a singer, born in Odessa (then in the Russian Empire), who performed at the Paris Opera in 1900–1903 and then held a literary salon with her husband Louis Bour.

She sang the role of Cleanthis in the première of Xavier Leroux's Astarté in 1901[4] and Waltraute in Wagner's Die Walküre in April 1903.

She was hired as a member of the troupe of the Grand Théâtre municipal de Lyon for the 1905–1906 season[5] where she sang the role of Hilda in Sigurd in October 1905.

She married psychiatrist Louis Bour[note 1] and held a literary salon which was attended by Louis Barthou, Prince Pierre de Polignac and Elisabeth of Bavaria, Queen of Belgium, but also writers from the interwar period: François Mauriac, Henry Bordeaux, Anna de Noailles and Léon-Paul Fargue,[6] Jean Cocteau, Henri de Régnier, Abel Bonnard, and also Georges Henri Rivière, Émile Borel.

It is Léon-Paul Fargue who introduced Paul Valéry in 1923; Louis Bour and his wife quickly became close friends of Valery but also sponsors.