RESEARCH

Research and publications on Lise Cristiani have been seriously slowed and sometimes even abandoned due to a lack of documents. Thus, we are still awaiting the announced works by Isabelle Blanchetière, Marie-Thérèse Grisenti, and Lonaïs Jaillais.

Before 2025, neither Lise's date of birth nor the precise date of her death was known.

Because we had neither his birth certificate nor his death certificate, just like for his mother Lisberthe.

We still have no information about his biological father – a musician?

After Lise's death, her family claimed that all their archives had burned in 1870-1871, shortly before the entire Parisian civil registry went up in flames along with the Hôtel de Ville. However, we now know that a large part of the Barbier archives survived. They can be traced back to the 1990s, when they were sold in Paris and dispersed around the world.

Among them are, for example, letters and album pages:

A handwritten letter from Lise Cristiani:

Première et dernière page d’une lettre de remerciement à Mlle Philippine Kaskel à Dresde : La lettre commence comme il faut,

First and last page of a thank-you letter to Miss Philippine Kaskel in Dresden:

The letter starts off well enough, but at the end Lise runs out of space. She signs:

"Lise B. Cristiany, Cellist to His Majesty the King of Denmark."

[Letter No. 4 of August 3, 1846 in Traces ] © Cello Library Lugano, Alfred Richter.

Lise Cristiani was not only a musician, but also a woman of letters. Her magnificent correspondence is a testament to this! It was to be published by Jules Barbier in a book in 1854—which never appeared. Only excerpts of her letters from Russia were known, published in two articles in 1860 and 1863, with passages clearly altered or added. We are therefore searching for Lise's original letters . In 2018, Katharina Deserno (see BOOKS ) published two short letters of 111 words each. By 2025, we had more than 4,000 autograph words (see DOCUMENTS ). This is both a great deal and a small amount compared to the announced book of 1854. Each new letter discovered opens new horizons, like these previously unpublished words in letter no. 4:

“From Copenhagen, I went up to Sweden, and from there to Norway. You can see that I've done some pretty good runs, a bit wild, quite dangerous, very glorious, and rather poor. […]

I will never complain about it, for I maintain that a true artist must sometimes travel for the body and often for the mind. If this maxim doesn't make one rich, at least it prevents one from being so foolish.

That's still a victory.

An album page written and composed by Lise Cristiani:

« Souvenir aussi pédant qu’affectueux laissé à Mademoiselle Philippine Kaskel par sa très là [lasse ?] mais très dévouée viol

" As pedantic as it is affectionate a souvenir left to Mademoiselle Philippine Kaskel by her very tired but very devoted cellist Lise B. Cristiani, This is my real name " [sic, when it is not the case], Paris, August 3, 1846.

[Album No. 2 in In the Footsteps of Lise Cristiani ] © Cello Library Lugano, Alfred Richter.

In the 1840s, every traveling virtuoso kept an album. He would write in his colleagues' albums, who in turn would write in his.

Lise composed a short Andante in Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's Stammbuch in 1845, after he had written a short Andante pastorale in his own. But Lise's album has disappeared. It appears to have been broken up in 1999: a New York dealer sold a single page in Leipzig shortly afterward. The Andante pastorale was authenticated there and given the opus number U193. Then it vanished: sold to another dealer, without any of the parties involved noticing the dedication " to Lise Cristiani ." For this name was completely unknown in 2000...

It is possible that the current owner is also unaware of this, as is the current holder of the album's remains. Within it lies an Andante by Giacomo Meyerbeer from 1846 and other treasures we are searching for.

If you are in possession of an autograph page by Lise Cristiani or if you have a lead that could lead to period documents in her handwriting or in which she is mentioned,

Thank you for contacting us!

Lise Cristiani's friends

In French, German and English: Mr. Waldemar KAMER waldemarkamer@yahoo.fr

In Russian: Ms. Marie-Thérèse GRISENTI mtgrisenti@gmail.com

Lise hasn't had her last word yet!