The Extraordinary Operatic Adventures of Blanche Arral.(Book Review)(Brief Article)

by Blanche Arral, translated by Ira Glackens, edited by William R. Moran Amadeus Press, 352pp. $24.95

Nee Clara Lardinois, Blanche Arral was born in Liege in 1864, the youngest of seventeen children in a well-to-do Walloon family. She apparently possessed from birth that sublime self-centeredness that is the mark of the true artist. Small in stature, as a child she raged at her mother (who had nursed the newborn of Clara's gravely ill eldest sister along with baby Clara), "I shall never grow any bigger, because you gave my milk to my niece, Valentine!" A pupil of Mathilde Marchesi, Arral had the clear, pliant tone typical of the Marchesi school: John Steane, in The Grand Tradition (1969), praises the "vivacity and impulsiveness" of her recording of the Faust jewel song. (One can sample Arral's work on Symposium CDs 1188 and 1243, and on Truesound 2016 and 2026.)

The most important house at which Arral sang was Paris's Opera-Comique, where she was a pensionnaire (repertory player) for several years. Still, her career as recitalist and as leading singer, sometimes impresario, of operetta troupes would take her to five continents and through a range of escapades wilder than anything seen on the operatic stage. She married ...