AVIS DE RECHERCHE ! / RESEARCH

Documents sought!

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 books by Isabelle Blanchetière, Marie-Thérèse Grisenti and Lonaïs Jaillais.

Before 2025, neither Lise's date of birth nor the precise date of death were known. Because we had neither her birth certificate nor her death certificate, just like for her mother Lisberthe. We still have no information about her 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 over the world.

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

A handwritten letter by 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

First and last page of a thank-you letter to Miss Philippine Kaskel in Dresden: The letter begins comme il faut (as it should), but Lise runs out of space at the end. She signs in the margin: ‘Lise B. Cristiany Violoncelliste de sa Majesté le Roi de Dannemark’ (Lise B. Cristiany, Cellist to His Majesty the King of Denmark). [Letter No. 4 dated 3 August 1846 in Sur les traces de Lise Cristiani] © Cello Library Lugano, Alfred Richter.

Lise Cristiani was not only a musician, but also a femme de lettres (writer) – her magnificent correspondence bears witness to this. Shortly after her death, Jules Barbier planned to publish it. Unfortunately, this book was never printed and only excerpts from Lise's letters from Russia have survived, published in two articles in 1860 and 1863, with passages that have clearly been altered or added. We are therefore searching for the original letters. In 2018, Katharina Deserno (see BOOKS) published two short letters containing 111 words. Seven years later, in 2025, we have reached more than 4,000 handwritten words (see DOCUMENTS). That is a lot, and yet very little compared to the book announced in 1854. Every newly found letter opens up new horizons, such as these unpublished lines in Letter N° 4:

« J’ai reçu de vous une aimable lettre à Kopenhague [sic] je crois. Depuis ce temps, je suis remontée en Suède, de là en Norwege [sic]. Vous voyez que j’ai fait d’assez belles courses, un peu sauvages, pas mal dangereuses, fort glorieuses et passablement pauvres. Voilà au juste les impressions qui m’y ont assaillies. Du reste, j’ai vu d’admirables pays, j’ai été reçue très bien et je ne m’en plaindrai jamais, car je prétends qu’un vrai artiste doit quelquefois voyager pour le corps et souvent pour l’esprit. Si cette maxime ne rend pas riche, du moins elle empêche d’être aussi bête. C’est toujours cela de gagné. »

“From Copenhagen, I went up to Sweden, and from there to Norway. I have had some rather splendid trips, a little wild, quite dangerous, highly glorious and fairly poor. […] I will never complain about this, because I claim that a true artist must sometimes travel for the body and often for the mind. If this maxim does not make you rich, at least it prevents you from being quite so stupid. That is already this to be gained." [Translation W. Kamer]

An album page written and composed by Lise Cristiani:

Album leaf dated 3 August 1846 (enclosed with the above letter)

« Souvenir aussi pédant qu’affectueux laissé à Mademoiselle Philippine Kaskel par sa très là [lasse ?] mais très dévouée violoncelliste Lise B. Cristiani / Ceci est mon vrai nom. »

"A pedantic as affectionate souvenir to Mademoiselle Philippine Kaskel by her very tired but very devoted cellist Lise B. Cristiani / This is my real name" [sic, although this was not the case], Paris, August 3, 1846.

[Album N° 2 in Sur les traces de Lise Cristiani] © Cello Library Lugano, Alfred Richter.

In the 1840s all travelling virtuosos kept an album. They wrote in their colleagues' albums, who in turn wrote something in their ‘autograph book’. In 1845, Lise composed an Andante in Felix Mendelssohn's "Stammbuch" after he had written an Andante pastorale in hers. But Lise's album vanished. It seems to have been dismantled in 1999: Shortly afterwards, a New York dealer sold this single page from it in Leipzig. There the Andante pastorale was authenticated and given the opus number U193. But then it disappeared again: it was sold on to another dealer without any of the parties involved noticing the dedication "à Lise Cristiani". Because in 2000 this name was still completely unknown!

The current owner may not be aware of this, nor may the holders of the other pages of the album. These include, for example, an Andante by Giacomo Meyerbeer for Lise from 1846 and other ‘treasures’ we are now searching for.

If you are in possession of a letter or autograph of Lise Cristiani or have any information about documents in which she is mentioned,

Thank you for contacting us!

Les amis de Lise Cristiani / The friends of Lise Cristiani

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

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

Lise hasn't spoken her last word yet!