A Venezuelan Icon
If a musician were to play for two U.S. presidents, be taught by three master composers, take up residence and perform across three continents, win a national piano endorsement deal, raise five children, and nurture a talent who would go on to found a world-renown artist residency program — and do most of it by age 40, well, no doubt, you’d be impressed. And if I told you nearly all of it was done before the turn of the century (the 19th to 20th, that is), you wouldn’t just be impressed, you might also be stumped.
Who is this person of such abundance? Excellent question. Grab your pen, because her name is as abundant as her credentials. It’s María Teresa Carreño García de Sena (1853-1917) — more commonly known as Teresa Carreño.
EARLY YEARS
Here she is age 8 (c. 1861-2), not long before she played in the White House for President Lincoln, who sought out music as a diversion from the demands of his post and the darkness of the war underway. So plucky and self-assured, she told the President she couldn’t possibly go on, because the piano was so out of tune (and it genuinely was).
Born in Caracas, Carreño lived there for her first eight years before emigrating to the U.S. with her family, but in that short time in Venezuela, she made big waves. Already a popular performer, improvising and dazzling audiences with her virtuosity, a leading Venezuelan musician and politician of the time, Felipe Larrazábal, published this statement in the local newspapers about her just before she let the country in 1862. (Keep in mind, she was only 8!)
“Mozart was the fertile genius of music, and also the predestined artist that created the immense order of beauties on which rest the system of modern composition. After a century, and not in the Old World, but in Columbus’ continent in South America, a zone of immigration of the sciences and the arts, where the serene and pure sky magnifies the talents; here, I say, God called to life the successor and worthy emulator of Mozart; it is a young girl from Caracas. Her name is: Teresa Carreno y Toro.
There is nothing and there has never been nothing in that genre comparable to the talent of our virtuoso compatriot.”
Did she live up to the hype? While I couldn’t speak to God’s perspective, I can say her resume’s answer is yes, and she started building her credentials fast. Only in the U.S. three months, she’d already made her concert debut in New York City and the master composer and pianist Louis Moreau Gottshalk, at the height of his fame, took her under his wing. That debut kicked off 55 years of performing, complemented by some composing (75 works), singing and conducting along the way. Concertizing took her to places as distant as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as closer destinations in Europe and North and South America.
Her early geographical hopping wasn’t limited to that move from Caracas to New York. By age 13, in 1866, Carreño moved to Paris, where, again, she made her debut within a few short months, and rubbed shoulders with Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod, Camille Saint-Saens and Gioachino Rossini, who apparently gave her a few singing lessons. That tutelage didn’t go to waste as, on her return to the U.S. in the 1870s, she swapped her usual duties at the keyboard for performing the role of Zerlina in Mozart’s opera, Don Giovanni.
MID-CAREER TOURING AND HER MAINE CONNECTION
The period of the 1870s and 1880s in the U.S. (she was in her 20s and 30s) was notable for Carreño’s many collaborations, sharing the bill with the top singers of the day such as Adelina Patti, and for her avid promotion of the work of her friend, Edvard Grieg, and her student, Edward MacDowell. Among her countless appearances dotted around the U.S. during this time was a concert right here in Portland. It took place on a rainy night, November 15, 1888 at City Hall (not the one you see on Congress St. today, instead the one that predated it, that stood from 1867 to 1908). That night, she shared the stage with two other artists — soprano Emma Juch and violinist Leopold Licthenberg. Portland was just one stop on a tour that stretched across the country, with a program that included some of Carreno’s own works as well as her those of teacher, Anton Rubinstein, and almost-teacher, Franz Liszt (again, rather self-assured, she declined his offer of lessons).
The effusive intensity of Carreño’s reviews, that started at such a tender age, never wavered. One stop in her international touring was London, for what we now know as the Proms (then simply called the promenade concerts), led by conductor Henry Wood, who said this about her, as a mature artist:
“It is difficult to express adequately what all musicians felt about this great woman who looked like a queen among pianists - and played like a goddess. The instant she walked onto the platform her steady dignity held her audience who watched with riveted attention while she arranged the long train she habitually wore. Her masculine vigour of tone and touch and her marvellous precision on executing octave passages carried everyone completely away.”
LEGACY
One of Carreño’s last performances was for President Woodrow Wilson at the White House in 1916. The next year she fell ill and passed away in New York City. If you ever find yourself on the Upper West Side, head to the corner of 96th and West End Avenue where you’ll find this plaque commemorating her at the “Della Robbia” apartment building where she resided.
Dazzling and driven, Teresa Carreno was a a quadruple threat of pianism, composition, singing and conducting, a mother, a teacher, a citizen of the world and nothing short of a Venezuelan icon.
LISTEN & LEARN MORE
A number of artists have recorded works by Carreño, including pianists Elly Ney, Alan Feinberg, Alexandra Oehler and Clara Rodriguez as well as Duo Lontano, and even Carreño herself.
Check out these two versions of Mi Teresita “Little Waltz” by Teresa Carreño:
https://youtu.be/rfAhZxmjWZA
Esther Abrami (violin), Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Irene Delgao-Jiménez (conductor), from the album, Esther Abrami: Women, a 2025 Sony release)
https://youtu.be/UjZmBRkNNw4
Teresa Carreño herself on an original c. 1908 piano roll, courtesy of Artis Wodehouse.
And, if you have a little one in your life who loves a good story or, even more, loves the piano, check out this gorgeous children’s book about Carreño titled, Dancing Hands, available at over 30 of Maine’s public libraries!
Of course, you can always find the music of Teresa Carreño right here on Maine Public Classical, where we love featuring her regularly. A little slice of Venezuela is never too far from our (and your) airwaves!