Berthe Mendes

as "Carmen" By Bizet

Leontine Mendes
1852-????
French mezzo-soprano



On January 16, 1876, Claude Debussy participated for the first time in a public concert at Chauny (Aisne), organized by the Fanfare des Manufactures de Glaces; he accompanied Léontine Mendès, then a student of Mme Viardot and Ponchard at the Paris Conservatoire, in a program composed of excerpts from operas (an air of the Jewess of Halévy, an air of Mignond'Ambroise Thomas) and instrumental pieces. Mendès obtained at the Conservatoire a second singing acclaim and a second prize in comic opera in 1876, then a first singing acclaim and a first prize in comic opera in 1877. Engaged at the Opéra-Comique then at the Opera, she left this theater to sing in Marseilles, Rouen, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Belgium, Holland, Greece, and so on. She left the theater in 1892 to devote herself to teaching in Paris.