Simone Berthe Ballard (26 March 1895 – 8 October 1978) was a French operatic

mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano (, ), or mezzo ( ), is a type of classical music, classical female singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. The mezzo-soprano's vocal range usually extends from the A bel ...

and

contralto A contralto () is a classical music, classical female singing human voice, voice whose vocal range is the lowest of their voice type, voice types. The contralto's vocal range is fairly rare, similar to the mezzo-soprano, and almost identical to ...

who sang leading parts, including premieres, at La Monnaie in Brussels.

Career

Simone Ballard was born in Sannois, Paris. Both her parents were engaged at the

Paris Opera The Paris Opera ( ) is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the , and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and officially renamed the , but continued to be kn ...

, her father Louis Ballard as a bass from 1894 to 1897, while her mother, Berthe Bronville (born 6 March 1865 in Paris), made her debut as a soprano in the role of Alice in Meyerbeer's ''

Robert le diable ''Robert le diable'' (''Robert the Devil'') is an opera in five acts composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer between 1827 and 1831, to a libretto written in French by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne. ''Robert le diable'' is regarded as one of the first ...

'' but gave up her career when she married in 1891. Ballard received early piano education and studied voice at the Conservatoire national de Paris with Eugène Lorrain and Jacques Isnardon. She made her debut at the Opera at La Monnaie in 1921 as Amneris in Verdi's ''

Aida ''Aida'' (or ''Aïda'', ) is a tragic opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 De ...

''. The performance won her an engagement at the house, where she sang until 1940. She took part in premieres, appearing on 2 May 1926 as the sister-in-law in Milhaud's '; on 28 December 1927 in the title role of Honegger's ''

Antigone ANTIGONE (Algorithms for coNTinuous / Integer Global Optimization of Nonlinear Equations), is a deterministic global optimization solver for general Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programs (MINLP). History ANTIGONE is an evolution of GloMIQO, a global ...

''; and in 1929 in

Sergei Prokofiev Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev; alternative transliterations of his name include ''Sergey'' or ''Serge'', and ''Prokofief'', ''Prokofieff'', or ''Prokofyev''. , group=n ( – 5 March 1953) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor who l ...

's '' Le Joueur''. She appeared in the first stagings of several operas at La Monnaie, including Kseniya's nurse in Modest Mussorgsky's '' Boris Godunov'' (1921), Khivria in Mussorgsky's '' The Fair at Sorochyntsi'' (1925), Tkatchikha in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's '' The Tale of Tsar Saltan'' (1926), The Mother / The Dragonfly, and the Chinese Cup in Maurice Ravel's '' L'enfant et les sortilèges'' (1926), Dèbora in Ildebrando Pizzetti's '' Dèbora e Jaéle'' (1929), and Orsola in Zandonai's '' La farsa amorosa'' (1933). Her about 70 parts included Azucena in Verdi's '' Il trovatore'', Dalila in ''

Samson et Dalila ''Samson and Delilah'' (), Op. 47, is a grand opera in three acts and four scenes by Camille Saint-Saëns to a French libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire. It was first performed in Weimar at the (Grand Ducal) Theater (now the Staatskapelle Weimar) on 2 ...

'' by Saint-Saëns, and the title role in Massenet's '' Hérodiade''. She performed roles in stage works by Richard Wagner, such as Magdalene in ''

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (; "The Master-Singers of Nuremberg"), WWV 96, is a music drama, or opera, in three acts, by Richard Wagner. It is the longest opera commonly performed, taking nearly four and a half hours, not counting two breaks between acts, and is traditio ...

'', Brangäne in ''

Tristan und Isolde ''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is a music drama in three acts by Richard Wagner set to a German libretto by the composer, loosely based on the medieval 12th-century romance ''Tristan and Iseult'' by Gottfried von Stras ...

'' and Fricka in ''

Der Ring des Nibelungen (''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the . The compo ...

''. She also appeared as the Countess in Tchaikovsky's '' Pique Dame'', as Annina in ''

Der Rosenkavalier (''The Knight of the Rose'' or ''The Rose-Bearer''), Op. 59, is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from Louvet de Couvrai's novel ''Les amours du cheva ...

'' by Strauss, as the grandmother in Manuel de Falla's '' La vida breve'', and as Juno in Offenbach's ''

Orphée aux enfers ''Orpheus in the Underworld'' and ''Orpheus in Hell'' are English names for (), a comic opera with music by Jacques Offenbach and words by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy. It was first performed as a two-act " opéra bouffon" at the Th ...

'' Ballard retired from the stage when she married the composer and conductor Albert Wolff in 1940. She died in Six-Fours-les-Plages in the south of France.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ballard, Simone 1895 births 1978 deaths Conservatoire de Paris alumni French operatic mezzo-sopranos French operatic contraltos 20th-century French women opera singers