George Sand and Chopin

No time in music history have the performers become more like idolized rock stars than in the Romantic Period (roughly 1780-1850).  Women would scream, swoon, pass out and throw everything from diamonds to underwear at these guys, the difference between then and now being that these Romantic composers/performers were truly seriously talented and the music was so new and sensual and exciting, who wouldn’t go cuckoo.  Franz Liszt could drop a woman (and then bed her later) in one sweeping etude and he knew exactly what he was doing.  But Frederic Chopin, a devout Catholic country boy, exiled from his beloved Poland to the hotbed of hot beds Paris, was the most reluctant idol….and most coveted.  Add in an extremely fragile disposition (TB killed him at a very young 39) and a fear of crowds (he only performed in small salon gatherings other than one concert) and it’s easy to see why he was such a crush.to.so.many.
Born just outside of Warsaw, Chopin was a child prodigy, composing and performing by age 8. The family moved to downtown Warsaw and Chopin continued his music studies, falling in love with the local girls along the way including Maria Wodzinska who after she dumped him, he bundled up her letters and wrote “my misery” on the front.

The war forced Chopin to exile himself from his beloved homeland and he never returned.  Needing work, he headed to Paris where he immediately became the star sensation with the belle monde.  Women by the score—literally! As we can see his road of conquest by the constant dedication to this woman and that woman on his scores—came and went, some leaving scars, some like Madame Catalani, an Italian opera singer, leaving a beautiful gold watch.

But it was the uber talented and ultra exotic George Sand/Baroness Aurore Dupin, who ultimately stole Chopin’s heart and probably shortened his life.  
When they first met in Paris Madame George was a screamingly successful writer and a voracious man-eater, already bedding most of the art community (Lizst, Massenet, Delacroix).  Chopin thought she was basically disgusting as she dressed, talked, smoked, shot and screwed like a man.  But she was swept off her feet by his music and determined to have him.  She succeeded. and, as an accomplished artist, she cartooned it all...

During the years they were together, she dragged him all over Europe, convinced his poor health was just due to lack of fresh air and exercise.  He in turn wrote some of his most famously romantic compositions and became a true superstar.

Sadly, she tired of him as she did with all men and left him with far worse health and a lock of her hair that he carried with him to his deathbed.

She went on to publish more successful scandalous novels and Chopin died a few years later, still attached to her memory.
And here’s where it gets fun.  Chopin had a deep fear of being buried alive so he insisted his heart be removed from his body after he died in Paris…just to make sure.  And that heart was to be given to his sister who was instructed to sneak it back into poland to be buried in his homeland.  And so it was and interred in the Holy Cross church in warsaw after being pickled (the heart, not the church) in cognac.

Fast forward to ww2 and the nazi’s are blowing up the town.  A german officer and big fan of Chopin, goes into the church and hacks out the container with the heart and then proceeds to blow up the church. Somehow???

The heart makes it back to the new Holy Cross church after the war but no one is really sure if its Chopin’s heart sooooo in 2014 in the middle of the night, the archbishop of Warsaw, the President, a Dr and a couple of guys with clubs sneak into the church and hack open Chopin’s tomb to see if it really is there and if it is really him.  What they found was indeed a heart that showed advanced stages of TB and that seemed to satisfy them.  But I guess we’ll never know for sure….and that’s my story for today.   Enjoy!