Teresa Carreño: The Goddess of the Piano (+Christmas)

On December 22, 1853, Teresa Carreño was born in the city of Caracas, a world-famous Venezuelan concert and composer, considered to be the greatest pianist during the 19th and 20th centuries, because it was unusual for a woman of her time to dedicate herself to that profession.

Teresa Carreño daughter of Manuel Antonio Carreño and Clorinda García de Sena y Toro. He began his piano studies with his father and continued them with Julio Hohené. On November 25, 1862, at just 9 years old, he gave his first concert at the Irving Hall theater in New York.

In 1873 she married the violinist Emile Sauret, but divorced in 1875 and married the following year, to the opera singer Giovanni Tagliapetra. Later, with her second husband, she founded a concert company, the Carreño-Donaldi Operatic Gem Company.

In mid-1885, she returned to Venezuela after an absence of 25 years, when she was invited by President Joaquín Crespo to give a concert in Caracas. In 1886, during the third presidential term of Antonio Guzmán Blanco, known as the Acclamation (1886-1888), she was commissioned to organize the next season of Caracas opera.

Returning to Europe after fulfilling the popular sentence that no one is a prophet in her land, Teresa Carreño served as the soloist of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

During the First World War, he began a tour of Spain, Cuba and the United States, where he died on June 12, 1917, a victim of general exhaustion due to long years of excessive work.

Her works as a composer include: Hymn to Bolivar; Salute to Caracas; the waltz A Teresita, dedicated to her daughter; the String Quartet in B flat and the Bal en Revé opus 26. His ashes were brought to Venezuela in 1938 and since December 9, 1977 they have been resting in the National Pantheon. In his honor, the main cultural complex in Caracas, inaugurated in 1983, bears his name.

Mazo News Team