“Name-dropping” can be VERY annoying, and we all know someone who can’t resist letting us know all the famous people they rub shoulders with–or DID, before social-distancing, that is.

Well, name-dropping is hard to avoid when talking about the remarkable mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot, who lived from 1821 to 1910. She studied piano with Liszt, for example, and played duets with Chopin. Wagner asked her to sing through parts of his new opera, “Tristan und Isolde” with him.

She also composed her own music, and on today’s date in 1867, one of her chamber operas received its first performance. The work was entitled “Le Dernier Sorcier,” or “The Last Sorcerer.” The libretto was written by the great Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, who adored Viardot and followed her around Europe like a puppy dog.

Later private performances were attended by Clara Schumann and the German Kaiser, and Viardot’s old piano teacher Franz Liszt arranged for the opera’s public premiere in 1869 at the Weimar Court Theatre. That same year Viardot built a little theater in her own villa, and at a performance there Brahms was so impressed he offered to return the following evening to conduct the work himself.