Barbie, Aliche

Maria Teresa Alice Laura Barbie ( Italian: Maria Teresa Alice Laura Barbi ; June 1, 1858, Modena - September 9, 1948, Rome ) - Italian singer, mezzo-soprano, chamber music performer.

Alice Barbie ital. Alice barbi
basic information
Date of Birth	June 1, 1858 ( 1858-06-01 )
Place of Birth	Modena
Date of death	September 4, 1948 ( 1948-09-04 ) (90 years old)
Place of death	Rome
A country	Italy
Professions	singer
Singing voice
Instruments

She studied music under the guidance of her father, a violin teacher, at seven she made her debut as a violinist. She studied at the Bologna Conservatory on the course of Carlo Verardi.

In 1876 she participated in the "First European Ladies' Orchestra" by Josephine Amann-Venlich. During a tour in Sweden and Holland she performed as a soloist with an orchestra. Then she studied vocals in Florence .

The first public vocal performance took place on April 2, 1882 in Milan , where Barbie performed four arias by Handel , Haydn , Gomelli and Rossini . After that, she performed in a concert given by Giovanni Sgambati at the Quirinale Palace in the presence of Queen Margarita . Subsequently, she mainly toured abroad: in Russia, England, German countries, and most of all in Austria, where Brahms was fascinated by her singing. In 1888 she made a big tour of Russia, reaching Tashkent and Samarkand . In 1890 she moved to Vienna , and became an imperial chamber singer.

She was considered one of the best chamber singers of her time, possessing a wide range of mezzo-sopranos and a delicate velvety timbre, and performing an unusual repertoire for the Italian, which included the German leads of Schubert and Brahms.

Prince Sergey Volkonsky , director of the Imperial Theaters, put Barbie in second place after Alexandra Panayeva :

It was also a fire, but restrained by some internal force. She sang in Italian and German, sang a huge repertoire, but the real spiritual air of her musical soul was the old Italians - Monteverdi, Caldara, Durante and others. This amazing old music was the channel in which Alice Barbie could show both the heat of her hot Italian blood and the severity of the classical forms of the Latin race. Subsequently (...) she added a lot of Schubert and Brahms to her repertoire. (...) there was a lot of inner light in it that transformed her; she possessed an amazing gift of reincarnation; she all changed in accordance with what she sang.

- Volkonsky S. M. My Memoirs, p. 145-146.

In 1893 in Dresden, Alice Barbie met with Baron Boris von Wolf , a Russian courtier and official of the Ministry of Finance, and soon announced the end of her artistic career. A farewell performance took place in Vienna on December 20, 1893, where Brahms accompanied her.

Baroness Alice von Wolf . Philip de Laszlo . 1901

On January 30, 1894, she married Boris von Wolf and moved to Russia, where she lived in St. Petersburg in the Diagon Alley and the Livonian estate of the Baron Wolfs in Stomersee (now the Stamerien Palace , in Latvia ).

... in a baronial environment, between the prim old aunts of her husband, to her, a hot Italian, it seemed to be difficult. In 1905, she had to flee from the pogroms and make her way through the forests and swamps to the station, which was eighty miles from the house.

- Volkonsky S. M. My Memoirs, p. 146.

She returned to the stage only once, giving two concerts in Vienna and Budapest in 1898, in memory of the first anniversary of the death of Brahms.

Two daughters were born in the marriage: Alexandra (Lisi; 1894-1982) and Olga (Loletta; 1896-1984).

After the death of Boris, who died in March 1917 in revolutionary Petrograd, on April 26, 1920, she married in London for a second marriage to the Italian ambassador, Sicilian aristocrat Pietro Tomazi della Toretta , who in 1917-1918 was engaged in the liquidation of the Italian representation in Russia.

In 1927 she returned to Italy, where Pietro became a senator, in 1944-1946 he was the last president of the Royal Senate , then the senator of the Italian Republic.

Alice von Wolf with her daughters. Palace Stomersee . 1900s

The eldest daughter of Baroness Alexandra, a well-known psychoanalyst, married in 1932 the nephew of her stepfather, writer Giuseppe Tomazi di Lampedusa . He had no children, and in 1957, Alice’s husband inherited his titles, becoming the 13th Duke of Palma, 12th Prince of Lampedusa, Baron Montechiaro, 1st Class Spanish Grand and the last representative of the male line of the house of Tomazi di Lampedusa .

The youngest daughter, Baroness Olga, married the diplomat Augusto Bianchi-Chiappori; the son of this marriage, diplomat and writer Boris Biankeri (1930–2011) described the ups and downs of the fate of his ancestors and relatives in the books Baltic Amber (1994), Return to Stomersee (2002) and The Fifth Exile (2006).