Caroline Carvalho and Her World

Abstract By practicing and extending the art of coloratura singing, Caroline Carvalho (née Marie Félix-Miolan, 1827–1895) became the French soprano par excellence of the mid-nineteenth century. In her early career, the Parisian press compared her vocal prowess to the instrumental pyrotechnics of Paganini and Liszt. This chapter illustrates how engaging with Carvalho and her contemporaries uncovers interesting intersections between mid-nineteenth-century vocal and instrumental idioms. In the first half, I explore Carvalho’s watershed moment in her creation of the title role of Victor Massé’s La Reine Topaze, which was a product of a complex mixture of circumstance, shrewd role choices, and genre. I investigate how that moment led to two different kinds of competition: between the soprano’s vocal agility and instrumental virtuosity, and between Carvalho and her coloratura competitors. By claiming a vocalism at least equal to the virtuosity of instrumentalists, Carvalho carved out a new space for the coloratura soprano.