Barbara Kendall-Davies’ operatic career lasted for more than thirty years and included the first Glyndebourne tour and numerous seasons across the UK. Between 1965 and 1995 she sang at Lille and Marseilles Opera and toured Germany, Switzerland and Japan.
Her career as a writer began with Cambridge Scholars when she published a two-volume biography of the seminal international opera singer, composer and teacher, Pauline Viardot Garcia in 2013. As only the second biography to be published on Garcia in English, the study attracted interest worldwide.
In the above video filmed in September for the Jersey Festival of Words, Barbara explains the genesis of the books. To see the full video of her journey as a writer, you can click here.
Both volumes of the biography are available in hardback and paperback on our website. You can learn about the first volume of the biography, subtitled ‘The Years of Fame’, by following this link. The second volume, ‘The Years of Grace’ is available here.
“As a former singer, Barbara Kendall-Davies has considerable technical knowledge and writes perceptively about singing. The biography is a result of years of travel and research and many wonderful images illustrate its pages. There is much of interest here for music lovers since the age of romanticism is covered extensively and Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Gounod, Berlioz, Massenet, Saint-Saens, Faure and Wagner all cross paths with our protagonist. Pauline Viardot Garcia and her legendary friend, Ivan Turgenev, are at the core of the world that Kendall-Davies ably documents.”
– Harold Bruder, The Record Collector
