a life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac
- Categories
- Book/Boek
- Creator
- Kahan, Sylvia
- Publish Year
- 2009
- Shelfmark
- VS 9 SIN 2009 - B
- Thesaurus
- kunsten, wetenschap, literatuurwetenschap, muziek, vorstenhuizen, partners van, Verenigde Staten, Frankrijk, 19e eeuw, 20e eeuw, biografie
- Description
- Biography of American-born Winnaretta Singer (1865-1943), a millionaire at the age of eighteen, due to her inheriting a substantial part of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. Her marriage in 1893 to Prince Edmond de Polignac, an amateur composer, brought her into contact with the elite strata of French society. After Edmond's death in 1901, she used her fortune to benefit the arts, science, and letters. Her most significant contribution was in the musical domain. She not only subsidized artists (Boulanger, Haskil, Rubinstein, Horowitz) and organizations (the Ballets Russes, l'Opéra de Paris, l'Orchestre Symphonique de Paris), but she made also a lifelong project of commissioning new musical works from composers to be performed in her Paris salon.