Tumbling Villa-Lobos

Eva Gauthier

“A further highlight in Gauthier’s career took place a few months later, when she performed songs by the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos, at the Festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music in Venice, Italy. Here, Gauthier courageously finished her performance despite opposition from the traditionalist audience, which booed the Villa-Lobos composition. Sixteen years later she remembered that “… the audience on the whole much preferred the music of the old Venetians to the masters of today” (The Musical Record, June 1941).”

— from the Library & Archives Canada Virtual Gramophone site, Canadian soprano Éva Gauthier - New York and Celebrity