Blanche Arral

Blanche Arral (actually Claire Lardinois, * 1864 in Liège, Belgium, † 1945 in Palisades Park, New Jersey) was a Belgian opera singer in the vocal range soprano.

Life

Blanche Arral was born in 1864 in Belgium as Claire Lardinois, but was called Clara Lardinois. She was the youngest of seventeen children of Count Jean Gregoire Lardinois and his wife Caroline Frederic. When she was ten years old, her family moved to Brussels. A friend of her father, the Prince de Caraman - Chimary, who was the President of the Brussels Conservatory convinced this that his daughter should take singing lessons at the Conservatory. Clara Lardinois studied from 1877 to 1880 and also took private lessons with Alfred Cabel.

1881 she visited Paris and studied for a short time at the conservatory, where it was prepared by Mathilde Marchesi for her opera debut. On December 8, 1882, she made ​​her debut at the Opéra -Comique in the role of one of three Israelite girl in Etienne- Nicolas Mehul 's " Joseph ". In the years 1884-1890 it belonged to the permanent ensemble of the Opéra -Comique.

The impresario Raoul Gunsbourg invited Clara Lardinois, to come to Russia, where they made ​​their debut in the 1891 Arcadia, a summer theater in St. Petersburg was. 1892 she married the Russian nobleman Sergei Peshkov, but in 1894, on a trip to Turkey - allegedly mysteriously - died.

After Clara Lardinois had spent a couple of years in her home in Belgium, in 1897, she traveled to San Juan in Costa Rica, where she opened the new local opera house with a role in Gounod 's "Faust". Here she performed under the name Blanche Arral for the first time. A few years later when she appeared in Egypt, they used another artist's name: Ada Nelson. In the years 1901 and 1902 she worked in Egypt, and then to travel to Asia with stops in Saigon, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Java in the years 1903-1906.

From 1906 to 1908 traveled Blanche Arral Australia and New Zealand, where she gave a series of concerts. In 1908 she met in Suva in Fiji the American author Jack London and his wife, whereupon London later gave her a brief mention as Lucille Arral in his novel Smoke Bellew.

From 1908 to Blanche Arral held on in the U.S., where she had only sporadic appearances until 1918 in concerts. In the 1930s, she was a 25 years younger schoolteacher, George B. Wheeler, married. Blanche Arral died 1945 in Palisades Park, New Jersey, where she is buried as Clara L. Wheeler.

Works

  • The Extraordinary Operatic Adventures of Blanche Arral. Opera Biography Series No.. 15 Amadeus Press, 2003, ISBN 1-57467-077-8.
  • Woman
  • Opera singer
  • Soprano
  • Born in 1864
  • Died in 1945
Music school Integrated Authority File
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