Teresa Carreño (1853 – 1917)
Teresa Carreño was born María Teresa Carreño García de Sena in Caracas, Venezuela. Her first music lessons came from her father, who was the son of Venezuelan composer Jose Cayetano Carreño.
In 1862, when she was 8 years old, Teresa Carreño’s family moved to New York City to further her career as a pianist. She met composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who became her mentor. In the following year she performed at the White House before President Lincoln. In 1866, the family moved to Paris, where she met Rossini, Gounod, and Liszt. Throughout her career, she frequently toured Europe, the United States, and also made appearances in Venezuela. She became known as “The Valkyrie of the Piano.”
Besides playing the piano, Teresa Carreño also sang, and she appeared as the Queen in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots and Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. She was married four times to four musicians (two of them brothers) and had six children.
The Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex in Caracas is named in her honor. It contains her archives and is home to the Venezuela Symphony Orchestra.
Teresa Carreño’s earliest piano compositions date from when she first began performing in public and use her own pieces as interludes between works by other composers. The impressionistic Un rêve en mer (A Dream at Sea), Opus 28, dates from about 1868, which means that she was probably about 14 when she wrote it. This is American pianist Sarah Cahill.