Volume 27, Number 3 · March 6, 1980
Hostess with the Mostest
By John Russell
Misia: The Life of Misia Sert
by Arthur Gold, by Robert Fizdale
Knopf, 337 pp., $16.95
For more than fifty years—from 1892, to be precise, until shortly after the end of World War II—it was a safe bet that at any hour of the day or night someone in Paris was talking about Misia Sert. Among those for whom poetry, music, art, and the dance were fundamental to life she acted as a necessary poison. Some of them could not imagine life without her. To others, she was about as welcome as quartz in a risotto. But, either way, she was talked about. Even today there are well-preserved old gentlemen in Paris who can bring out her name with a note of wonder and admiration that was common form all over the town from the moment at which she first played the piano in public, as a girl of twenty, in 1892.
Review, 2987 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |