Magdeleine Brard
Magdeleine Brard, also known as Magda Brard, was a French pianist. During the 1930s, she was associated with Benito Mussolini, and under his patronage ran a music school in Turin.
Early life
Magda Marie Anna Brard was born in Pontivy, Brittany, the daughter of, a businessman and politician. Her brother Roger Brard became a naval admiral and president of the Societé Mathématique de France. She was a prize-winning student at the Paris Conservatoire, under Alfred Cortot.Musical career
Magdeleine Brard toured in the United States as a pianist in 1919, sponsored by the French ministry of fine arts. She was possibly the youngest female soloist ever with the Metropolitan Opera when she played there at age 15.In spring 1922 she gave twenty concerts in France, and returned to the United States for further performances in the autumn of that year. During the 1922 visit, she volunteered as a subject of analysis at the Cleveland School of Character Diagnosis, a clinic interested in the personalities of high achievers. She made piano roll recordings of works by Liszt, Chopin, Schumann, Scriabin, Chabrier, Arensky, Massenet, Fauré, and Saint-Saens in the 1920s, and performed at New York's Hippodrome in 1925.
She played for Benito Mussolini at his Villa Torlonia in 1926, while she was pregnant with her first child. By the following year, they were understood to be lovers, and he demanded that she forgo further musical performances, and forbid the Italian press from covering any events where she performed. There were rumors that she was a French spy, and she was at risk from others in Mussolini's confidence.
In 1933, she opened a music school in Turin. She was director of the "Accademia della musica" from 1933 to 1943. She was arrested in 1945, but freed after intervention from French diplomats, and returned to Paris after the war. She taught Italian in a private school later in life.