Icons of Europe Bel Canto: Chopin Teaching the Art of Singing: Volume 11 (Icon series)

Chopin tutored opera stars in the art of singing! This new discovery overturns the traditional view that Chopin’s teaching was limited to piano playing and that his pupils were mainly high-society ladies in Paris. – The "Bel Canto" booklet was initially presented as a research paper at the International Musicological Conference organized by the Bibliothèque Polonaise à Paris and the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, Warsaw on 18 September 2013. – The career of three sopranos of international fame makes the point: Pauline Garcia Viardot, Henriette Nissen and Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, who all were pupils of Chopin. – The authors conclude that Chopin made an important contribution to the Bel Canto tradition as it evolved in parallel with the development of the piano and other instruments, and that his method was rooted in the teaching principles of the famous Bel Canto tenor and voice pedagogue Manuel Garcia, Sr. About the Author Cecilia and Jens Jorgensen are authors of “Chopin and The Swedish Nightingale” (2003), later staged as a musical drama (2003-2008) and used in a BBC documentary (2010). Their booklet “Chopin’s Dream”, focusing on Jenny Lind’s love for Chopin, became in 2013 the 10th edition of the Icon series of investigative research. The new edition, “Bel Canto” reveals that Chopin was teaching singers. Its content is drawn from a large body of original period information researched since 2002 by Icons of Europe.