France
Augusta Holmès was born in Paris in 1847, to an affluent family of art-lovers. Her father Charles Holmes, an army officer of Irish origin, specialised in Shakespeare, and her English mother Tryphina Anna Shearer was a painter and poet. Alfred de Vigny was her godfather. As her mother refused to have a piano in the household, it was only after her passing in 1858 that the child began practising. She also trained in harmony and instrumentation, and developed her voice. She made a name for herself as a singer and pianist, captivating celebrities including Rossini, Gounod, and Saint-Saëns with both her talent and her beauty. She began composing early, but only received proper training around 1875, under César Franck. Her first mélodies were composed in 1868, and between then and 1902 she wrote over a hundred and thirty, with all but half a dozen based on her own poems. Her poetry was visibly influenced by the Parnassians, of which her husband Catulle Mendès was one of the leading figures. She was also a prolific composer of symphonic music, receiving support from conductors Édouard Colonne, Charles Pasdeloup, and Charles Lamoureux, who performed or reprised her works. Of particular note: symphonic poems Irlande (1881), Pologne (circa 1881), and Andromède (cicra 1883); and symphonies dramatiques or lyric symphonies Lutèce (1877), Les Argonautes (1880), Ludus pro patria (1887), and Au pays bleu (1890), adapting her own poems. Her opera La Montagne Noire (1885), on her own libretto, was performed at the Paris Opera in 1895. Despite initial success, the opera did not enter the repertoire – some blame the libretto, with an English journalist also alluding to a misogynistic cabal led by Ernest Reyer. Augusta Holmès had five children with Catulle Mendès, three daughters (subjects of the Auguste Renoir painting Les filles de Catulle Mendès, 1888) and two boys.
Note that she only used the pseudonym Hermann Zenta early in her career.

– Florence Launay –

[Traduction en anglais : Raphaël Meyer]
Contributor: Présence Compositrices - last updated 16 December 2024

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