De Reszke, Josephine

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De Reszke, Josephine

De Reszke, Josephine, Polish soprano, sister of Jean (Jan Mieczislaw) de Reszke and Edouard de Reszke; b. Warsaw, June 4, 1855; d. there, Feb. 22, 1891. She studied at the St. Petersburg Cons., first appearing in public under the name of Giuseppina di Reschi at Venice in 1874. She sang Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust (Aug. 1, 1874), with her brother Jean as Valentin; then was engaged at the Paris opéra, where she made her debut as Ophelia in Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas (Paris, June 21, 1875); later sang in Madrid and Lisbon, and appeared as Aida at Covent Garden in London on April 18, 1881. She retired from the stage upon her marriage in 1885 and settled in Poland.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire

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