The brilliant success he achieved divides Chopin’s life in France into two distinct periods. The later period we know well. When he became rich and famous, his public performances were announced on posters, they were commented on and discussed in the press; every gesture, every word was noted by students, chroniclers and diarists. His first months in Paris, however, are not known. What did he do? Where did he live? How did he live? Instead of facts, the same inaccurate legends keep cropping up. The poor do not have a history. And yet the period preceding Chopin’s triumph deserves more attention to detail: it was during those months that this aspiring concert pianist was transformed into the most expensive Master of the Pianoforte; the composer of works intended for performance in huge concert halls turned into the composer of brilliant études, preludes, nocturnes and mazurkas, played for an élite audience in the leading drawing-rooms of Paris.
The night Chopin became famous
(excerpts from the Programme of the Gala Concert at the Monte Carlo Opera, Feb. 24th, 2010, by Christian Charlet, historian)
‘Only recently has it been possible to establish without a shadow of doubt that the Parisian concert which launched Chopin on the path to fame did not take place in the universally acknowledged venue. It was actually the Hôtel de Monaco in the Faubourg Saint-German (today the Polish Embassy in France), which hosted this musical genius’s successful debut. It is to Piotr Witt that we owe this important discovery. Witt is a Polish historian who has already written a remarkable study of the Hôtel de Monaco. To date, it had been accepted that Chopin’s social successes in the drawing-rooms of the July Monarchy were due to the concert he gave in the Salle Pleyel on 25 or 26 February 1832 (there has been some disagreement on the actual date). However, the Salle Pleyel as we know it today did not exist then. The main, and perhaps sole, aim of the concert held in this private drawing room was the presentation of instruments produced by the famous pianoforte manufacturer. The presence of "Monsieur Chopin de Varsovie" was only intended as an added attraction. Indeed, following the concert at the Pleyels, Chopin remained as impoverished and unknown as before it.
Together with all Parisians at the time, Chopin had to live through the terrible epidemic of cholera which claimed 20,000 victims. Paris was all but deserted until the end of 1832 and Chopin, on the verge of destitution, was considering leaving France and trying his luck in America. Then came the fortuitous turning point which made him change his mind and, in January 1833, he wrote to a friend saying that he was now comfortably established with a regular income of 100 gold francs daily (the equivalent of several hundred euros today). What was it that caused the young Pole with the French surname to change his lifestyle so suddenly from abject poverty to a degree of opulence? The answer is simple: a prestigious concert in the Hôtel de Monaco on 30 December 1832’.
The author has made a truly remarkable discovery which changes everything we have hitherto accepted as fact regarding the exact date and place of the artist’s first real success which was to have such a deciding effect on his future popularity and development. He tells the story in a truly fascinating way. (...) The brilliant, glittering background of the Paris of the 1830s, the diversity of its districts and populations, the extraordinary knowledge of prices of apartments, of bread and meals... (...) The attributes of Piotr Witt’s book mean that it can fascinate even those who are deaf to music.
– Andrzej Dobosz, writer and literary critic.
About the Author
Piotr Witt - writer, historian, essayist; in the 1970s editor of Warsaw-based "Sztuka (editor translation: Art)" magazine. In the 1980s and in early 1990, until the closure of the radio-station, he broadcast some 3,000 radio commentaries for Radio Free Europe . Author of, among others: Vierge de Czestochowa, en tant q’une idée politique (Université de Lille, 1989), and Ambassade de Pologne - Hôtel de Monaco (Flammarion, 2005). He lives in Paris.
On the Threshold of Fame: Chopin's First Steps in Paris – Piotr Witt
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1st Edition: Warsaw 2010 . Published and financed by Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego - MKiDN)
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2nd Edition: Warsaw 2015 . Published by DiG . With the Foreword by Rafał Blechacz.
Summary translated by Barbara Herchenreder (London)