Lucienne Breval by Benque

Lucienne Breval as Selika 'L"Africane" Meyerbeer (DEBUT ROLE)
LUCIENNE BREVAL
(Bertha Agnès Lisette Schilling)
(4 November 1869, Zürich- 15 August 1935, Neuilly-sur-Seine)
Swiss Soprano
She studied voice with Victor Warot at the Paris Conservatoire before making her debut at the Opéra National de Paris in 1892 as Selika in l'Africaine by Giacomo Meyerbeer .Bréval became a principal soprano at the Paris Opéra and remained there until 1919.[3] Her roles with the company included several world premières including Augusta Holmès's La Montagne Noire (1895), Camille Erlanger's Le fils de l' étoile' (1904), Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-bleue (1907), Massenet's Bacchus (1909), and the title roles in Massenet's Ariane (1906) and Henry Février’s Monna Vanna (1909). She also was Kundry in France's first performance of Wagner's Parsifal (1914). Her other notable roles at the Paris Opera included Brünnhilde in Richard Wagner's Die Walküre (1893), Venus in Wagner's Tannhäuser (1895), Marguerite in Hector Berlioz's La damnation de Faust (1897), and the title role in Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie (1908).
Bréval also occasionally appeared in productions at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Most notably she portrayed the title role in the world premiere of Massenet’s Grisélidis in 1901, and in 1910 she sang Lady Macbeth in the première of Ernst Bloch’s Macbeth, which he dedicated to her.
In 1899, Bréval made her first appearance at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden as Valentine in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. Two years later she made her American début at the Metropolitan Opera as Chimène in Le Cid, singing also in Die Walküre and the American première of Ernest Reyer’s Salammbô. Five years later she returned to Covent Garden for the second and last time in the title role of Gluck’s Armide. In 1913 she created the title role in Fauré’s Pénélope at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo; her other title roles there had been in Isidore De Lara's Amy Robsart and in Bizet's Carmen