The "Queen of Cellists," Guilhermina Suggia (1885-1950) was one of the first women to make a professional career of playing the cello. From obscure beginnings in Porto, Portugual, she rose to pre-eminence on the concert stage and was hailed as one of the greatest performing artists of her day. Suggia is a legendary figure in musical history—legendary in the sense that, while many stories are told about her, few of the facts of her life are widely known.

Suggia came from a musical family. Her father Augusto was a cellist who served on the faculty of the Lisbon Conservatory before taking a teaching job in Porto, and her older sister Virginia was a talented pianist. Augusto had high

A photo of Guilhermina Suggia (photographer unknown).

ambitions for both of his daughters: He initiated their musical training when they were still toddlers and encouraged them to develop performing careers. As child prodigies Virginia and Guilhermina achieved early fame playing together in local salons and clubs. By the time she was a teenager Guilhermina had made her professional debut and was a member of a quartet led by the violinist Bernardo Valentim Moreira de Sá. At 16 she was awarded a royal scholarship to continue her studies at Leipzig Conservatory.

In Leipzig she received training from Julius Klengel, one of Europe’s most famous cello teachers, whose students included Emanuel Feuermann, Jascha Bernstein, Mischa Schneider, Benar Heifetz, Henri Honneger, and Gregor Piatigorsky. Suggia had a government scholarship for a three-year stay in Leipzig but her progress was so rapid that she graduated in less than half that time. At 18 she debuted with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, led by Arthur Nikisch, in February 1903, and spent the next three years giving concerts in a dizzying succession of European cities. In Vienna she played some works of Leone Sinigaglia with the composer. In Karlsbad, David Popper signed her autograph book, "To the greatest of living cellists, Guilhermina Suggia, from your old friend David Popper." In Prague she met Dvorák’s daughter, who told Suggia that she interpreted her father’s music exactly as he would have wished.

From roughly 1906 to 1913 Suggia lived in Paris with Pablo Casals. The two cellists had met in 1898, when she was 13 and he was 21. He had a summer job playing in a septet at a resort casino near Porto, and she was brought to him for weekly lessons until his return to Spain at the end of the summer. Their paths probably crossed intermittently in the ensuing years. In 1905, Casals rented Villa Molitor, a three-story house with a garden in the Auteil section of Paris. By 1907 they were living there together. There is no evidence that Casals and Suggia ever married (records of neither marriage nor divorce have ever been discovered), but from 1908 onwards they pretended to be. During the six years they lived together, she was listed on concert programs as "Guilhermina Suggia-Casals" or "Guilhermina Casals" and in correspondence with family and friends they referred to each other as husband and wife. It was an unconventional arrangement for the era, especially given that both came from conservative Catholic backgrounds, and probably was dictated more by Suggia’s reservations about marriage than by Casals’.

With Casals, Suggia was at the center of an international circle of friends and acquaintances that included many of the most famous musicians of the day. Among the regular visitors at Villa Molitor were Casals’ trio partners Cortot and Thibaud; pianists Harold Bauer, Ferruccio Busoni, Raoul Pugno, and Mieczyslaw Horszowski; violist Pierre Monteux; and violinists

A 1923 painting of Guilhermina Suggia by António Carneiro.

Fritz Kreisler, Georges Enesco, and Eugène Ysaÿe. Casals and Suggia played together frequently, on the concert stage and informally. Three compositions are dedicated to them: Emanuel Moór’s Double Cello Concerto and Suite for Two Cellos, and Donald Tovey’s Sonata for Two Cellos.

The relationship between Suggia and Casals was passionate, dynamic, and ultimately too combustible to hold together. Age and temperament differences created friction, and it was inevitable that two gifted cellists living under the same roof would be afflicted by professional competition and jealousy. Troubles in the relationship reached a climax late in the summer of 1912, when the couple and several guests including Donald Tovey were vacationing in San Salvador, Spain. The details are cloudy, but somehow Tovey’s presence precipitated a devastating confrontation. Casals exploded in a jealous rage, probably caused by an amorous transgression between Tovey and Suggia. Efforts to repair the relationship failed, and eventually Suggia sailed for England to begin a new chapter of her life, alone.

When it was over, they both tried to bury the story of their romance. Casals refused to speak of Suggia with his many in terviewers and biographers, stating only that his time with her was "the most cruelly unhappy episode" of his life. When Suggia spoke or wrote of Casals it was solely in a professional, not a personal, connection. They never played together again.

After leaving Casals, Suggia moved to England, where she forged a spectacularly successful solo career. Her popularity can be attributed to a combination of supreme musicianship and dramatic stage presence. She was a charismatic performer with well-honed expressive powers. "To be on the stage is to communicate with the whole body and not only with the cello," she once said. At the same time, her showmanship never disfigured a rigorous musical foundation. Throughout her career Suggia was praised for her faultless technique, commanding bowing, supple phrasing, warm and sonorous tone, and sensitive interpretations.

Remembering Suggia, a forum featuring a panel discussion and rare Suggia recordings, will take place in Morse Hall, Thursday, April 4, from 2:30 – 4 p.m. The panelists are Anita Mercier, Juilliard liberal arts faculty; Fatima Pombo, author of Guilhermina Suggia or The Luxuriant Violoncello; and Robert Baldock, author of Pablo Casals. All are welcome. R.S.V.P. by February 18 to ext. 215

Juilliard faculty member Zara Nelsova was brought to Suggia’s concerts when she was a child and was deeply inspired by her playing. Many years later, Suggia heard about one of Nelsova’s performances and invited her to tea. She wanted to make plans for Nelsova to play in Lisbon and Porto. Suggia died before the concerts were arranged, but Nelsova played at her memorial concert in London. "She was magnificent," says Nelsova. "She had great flair, and people adored her."

The legend of Suggia is inseparable from a famous portrait of the cellist painted by Augustus John. John depicted Suggia playing her Strad in a gorgeous, low-cut crimson gown, with her bowing arm extended dramatically and her head tilted back in an attitude of artistic transport. It is an arresting portrait, at once serious and sensual. The painting caused a sensation when it was initially exhibited in 1925 and remained a constant reference in reviews of Suggia’s concerts throughout her long career.

The 1717 Strad that Suggia played was an engagement gift from the wealthy publisher Edward Hudson, to whom she was engaged in 1919. (Even after she broke off the engagement, she kept the Strad.) Unwilling to sacrifice her independence and focus upon work, Suggia refused to marry until her career was firmly established. At the age of 42 she wed Dr. José Casimiro Carteado Mena, a wealthy Porto radiologist. Suggia had no children.

Throughout her long career Suggia shared the stage with many other famous musicians, including Casals, Jelly d’Arányi, Ethel Smyth, Arthur Rubinstein, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Carl Orloff. The distinguished conductors she worked with included Sir Hamilton Harty, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Henry Wood, and Sir Malcolm Sargent. Sargent once sent Suggia a gift along with a note that read, "With all my best love and kind thoughts. Please don’t hurry to get up—Queens can wait upon Suggias. Your devoted Malcolm."

Suggia succumbed to cancer at the age of 65. She dedicated most of her estate to the support of young cellists, and among her bequests are two prestigious scholarship funds: the Suggia Trust, administered by the Arts Council of Great Britain, and the Royal Academy of Music’s Suggia Prize. The most famous recipient of the Suggia Prize is Jacqueline du Pré, who, in 1955, at age 10, was awarded a scholarship that paid for six years of lessons with William Pleeth. Additional funding from the Suggia Trust enabled du Pré to study with Casals and with Paul Tortelier.

When Suggia was born, the cello was considered a "masculine" instrument; both the "ungainly" posture required to play it and the imposing sonority of the instrument rendered it inappropriate for proper young ladies. (Only one professional female cellist is known from the first half of the 19th century: Lisa Cristiani [or Christiani], born in Paris in 1827. Mendelssohn dedicated his Song Without Words, Op. 109, to her.) When Suggia died, largely because of her example, no one could question the place of female cellists in the musical world. Suggia was a rare revolutionary who made breaking all the rules look elegant and easy.

Anita Mercier has been a member of the liberal arts faculty since 1995.

A longer version of this article is online in the Jan./Feb. edition of the Tutti Celli newsletter.