The waves of nationalism that had surged throughout Europe during the years of the Belle Époque, and reached a peak of ferocity in World War I, came to a pivotal point with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. The division of Eastern Europe was one of the major topics of the treaty negotiations, as the three empires…
Read MoreThe outbreak of World War I in August 1914 brought the years of the Belle Époque to a violent and abrupt end. Once the fighting started, it was only a matter of weeks before Parisians found the war at their doorstep in September’s battle of the Marne…
Read MoreDuring the years of the Belle Époque in Paris, artmaking wasn’t happening in any royal court – it was happening in people’s living rooms. Paris’s patrons of the arts and artists alike, such as the heiress and royal-by-marriage Winnaretta Singer, the symbolist poet Stephane Mallarmé, and the soprano Emma Bardac…
Read MoreThe second foreign language I studied as a child, after Modern Greek, was French. As a result, when I began studying voice in earnest, the first non-English songs my teacher assigned me were songs in French by Reynaldo Hahn and Gabriel Fauré. It was through these songs that I discovered my love of singing classical music…
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