Marie-Foscarine DAMASCHINO

The best-known member of the Damaschino family, originally from Corfu, was François (1840-89), a brilliant researcher specialising in bacteriology, Professor of Internal Medicine at the Faculté de Médecine de Paris and member of the Académie de Médecine. His composer sister seems to have had an existence devoid of all public artistic performance. Moreover, when she published her works, she used a male pseudonym derived from her compound first name: Mario Foscarina. Whether self-published or issued by commercial firms, her works initially followed two common paths for women in the 1870s: mélodies (with a predilection for the poems of Musset, Lamartine and Hugo) and genre pieces for piano. In the following decade, Damaschino deviated from the beaten track and tried her hand at chamber music (pieces for violin and piano) and above all music for orchestra. Danse bretonne, Danse roumaine, La Thessalienne (élégie), La Aldeana (villanelle) and a Suite vénitienne were the highlights of a publishing career that ended in the early 1890s. The last of these scores is dedicated ‘à mon maître Ernest Guiraud’, thus revealing the name of the teacher with whom she honed her orchestral skills. The end of this period of creativity seems to have been dictated by her private life: in 1888 her first husband, Panaidi Patrikios, died in Corfu. In 1898 she married again, to Octave Keller, a mining inspector. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the new name of ‘Mme Octave Keller’ is occasionally mentioned in the artistic press as the organiser of musical matinees.