Cornélie Falcon : une interprète d'exception

Although short, the career of Cornélie Falcon (1814-1897), described here, made her a performer who was to be forever linked to the history of Romantic opera, and particularly to the two roles she created in Halévy’s La Juive and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. This article also describes the other works in which she won renown (Gluck, Mozart, Auber, Rossini, and Louise Bertin, among others), as well as the circumstances in which she lost her voice at the age of 26. With the aid of contemporary accounts by Berlioz, Fétis, Gautier and Castil-Blaze in particular, this article concludes with an attempt to characterise the voice and style of this singer, whose name is still associated with a certain type of dramatic soprano.