Eliette von Karajan

Eliette Mouret was born at Mollans-sur-Ouvèze, a little hill-town behind Avignon where her parents owned a holiday home. They were both teachers.[7] There was a sister who was twenty years her senior: she was still very small when her father died.[7] She later told an interviewer that her mother "was a teacher with a passion for playing the piano, but no time for me. I ended up with a 'foster mother'".[4][lower-alpha 1] She attended a boarding school run by nuns, and grew up in Nice.[2]

She was "discovered" by Christian Dior when she was 18. Mouriet worked for Dior as a long legged photo-model, showing off wedding dresses and other high-class outfits in Europe's competing "fashion capitals". At some point during the early 1950s she first met Herbert von Karajan on a friend's yacht at St. Tropez.[8] She was reportedly seventeen at the time, though according to one jaded - albeit self-evidently numerate and eminently "serious" - biographer, "like many very beautiful women ..... [she] was seventeen for an awfully long time".[7] Being at sea often made her sick: on this occasion it was the smell of frying fish that set her off, and she had to be escorted ashore: Herbert von Karajan volunteered for the task.[9] In 1955 they met up again in London, by which time she had become obsessed with the maestro,[7] During the early 1950s she accompanied him as his "girl friend" on visits to the island of Ischia where they would meet up with fellow musicians (and others) including William Walton and his garrulous wife. Lady Walton later recalled that Eliette "was always seasick", when taken sailing before breakfast, but "never complained". Another of Lady Walton's more striking vignettes from those visits to the Bay of Naples featured Karajan and girlfriend sharing a Vespa, with Eliette sitting side saddle on the back as they scootered back and forth across the island.[7] Hebert and Anita von Karajan were divorced in 1958: he and Eliette Mouret then married at Megève on 6 October 1958.[7][9] The life of a fashion model was exchanged for that of a "jet set wife" and, a few years later, mother.[9] She was the third of Karajan's three wives: they would remain married for 31 years.[9] Later still she would tell an interviewer that the first present she received from her husband was a pair of hiking boots.[4]

The couple's elder daughter, Isabel, was born on 25 June 1960 in Vienna. Eliette would explain that the name "Isabel" was in honour of a favourite hotel on Ischia. Isabel Karajan has subsequently achieved notability as an actress. The Karajans' younger daughter was born at Samaden on 2 January 1964.[10] This time a more overtly musical connection is cited: Arabel received her name as a tribute to the not quite eponymous sugar-coated Strauss opera Arabella.[4] Many children are provided with Godparent's at or shortly after birth. The "Godparents" assigned to Isabel and Arabel Karajan were respectively the Vienna Philharmonic and Berlin Philharmonic orchestras.[11]

Over the next three decades Eliette von Karajan accompanied her husband "everywhere", matching his formidable programme of travel and performances with her own remarkable blend of patience, devotion and commitment, moving among his fans and admirers and attempting to shield him, as far as possible, from some of the more oppressive aspects of the celebrity which he courted and craved. Through it all, unbreakable iron discipline and bottomless energy were vital elements in the life they shared.[4] Karajan also very much valued her musical judgment precisely because she was neither a trained musician nor a professional musicologist: as a "mere music lover" he knew that she was more representative of concert goers and record buyers than any pundit or professional rival.[7] She alone sat with him through the agonisingly tense waits behind the curtain, as he studied a score and arranged for her to have a foot massage, before he headed out towards the podium and she, as decorously as possible, rushed to take her place, habitually placed in the front row of the audience. A pattern was quickly established, and then, as the Karajan era reached a third decade, one or two less charitable commentators emerged to imply that there was an element of careful choreography in the way the Karajans presented a public face of their intense partnership.[12] Between concerts she would quietly sit in on orchestral rehearsals for hours on end.[4]

The life they led meant that Karajans became were part of a network of cerebral artist-celebrities with a taste for the high-life. Carefully honed media presentation came with the territory. Friends included Jean Cocteau,[13] Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Henri-Georges Clouzot,[14] Helmut Schmidt, Marc Chagall,[15] and the actress Romy Schneider, with whom Eliette liked to "flirt", although relations cooled a little after Schnieder, while staying as a house-guest, used a lipstick to scrawl graffiti all over the large mirror in the bathroom: "very awkward for my staff", Eliette later recalled.[4][lower-alpha 2]

Much of the couple's married life was spent travelling in connection with Herbert von Karajan's work. From around 1961, when they did come home, it was to St. Moritz (in Winter), St. Tropez (in Summer) or Karajan's small estate at Anif, on the southern edge of Salzburg (especially during the festival).[16] In each of these municipalities they lived in some style, supported by staffs of domestic servants.[9] Since she was widowed in 1989 the pace of the travelling has become very much less frenetic, and Eliette von Karajan has for the most part simply alternative between living at the homes the couple had shared at St. Tropez and Anif.[17]

While still working as a professional fashion model Eliette Mouret enrolled briefly at an art academy in London. Professional pressures, followed by a full-time marriage accompanied by motherhood, meant that she never finished the course. After a visit to the "Visuals Academy" (" Internationale Sommer Akademie für Bildenden Künste") set up in Switzerland by Oskar Kokoschka she returned to her art, however.[18][20] She was supported by several "famous name artists" of the time who were also friends. These included "late surrealists" such as Ernst Fuchs, Jörg Immendorff and Marc Chagall whom she visited frequently at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence.[11] Her teacher, the painter Herbert Breiter, was also a very important artistic influence.[21] Her husband was particularly enthusiastic about Eliette's emergence as an artist.[18]

Till 1982 Eliette's art remained an entirely private passion. Then a series of her paintings were featured on record sleeves (with more in a separate accompanying supplement) for a special anniversary collection of Karajan recordings issued to celebrate the centenary of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestras (of which Herbert von Karajan had been principal conductor since 1956). The entire set, which had originally comprised 50 LP discs, was re-issued on 5 April 1988 as a set of 25 CDs to mark von Karajan's eightieth birthday.[16]

Herbert von Karajan suffered what turned out to be his fatal heart attack on 15 July 1989 and died the next day. While he was alive the management of his media image had been an important skill, and following his death employed Eliette adeptly applied "secrecy and speed" in order to ensure that, on this occasion, his funeral did not become a press spectacle. Only around ten people knew of the arrangements for the private funeral ceremony in the little cemetery at Anif. As matters turned out, the burial was delayed for several hours after a large long forgotten stone plinth was found a few centimeters under the surface at the position agreed, many years before, as the maestro's last resting place. Everything ground to a halt while a farmer was found to use a heavy tractor with lifting tackle to drag the subterranean impediment away. It was dark by the time the body of Herbert von Karajan could be buried, but the entire ceremony nevertheless remained a private family matter.[7]

It was at the widow's instigation that in 1995 the "Herbert von Karajan Center" was set up in Vienna, across the road from the "Staatsoper". It accommodated a comprehensive archive of Herbert von Karajan's many audio and video recordings. The centre closed in 2006. As usual with the Karajans. the press were there to ask questions: Eliette was, it seemed, disappointed that it had become necessary to turn the front of the Karajan Center into a tacky souvenir shop. It was no coincidence that the closure of the Karajan Center opposite the Vienna's principal Opera House followed shortly after the opening, in December 2005, of the Eliette and Herbert von Karajan Institute.[23] Michael Dewitte, the director of the Salzburg Easter Festival, was appointed Geschäftsführer (loosely, "CEO") of the institute, into which the Vienna-based Karajan Center's surviving activities were to be incorporated.[23] It was explained that the institute, for which an annual budget of €1.5 million had been set aside, would co-ordinate concert planning in connection with the forthcoming centenary, in 2008, of Herbert von Karajan's birth. It was located not, as might have been expected, in Vienna, but in Salzburg, emphasizing the Karajans' close artistic and personal connections with that city.[23] In the longer term, the ambition was for the institute to celebrate and to make more widely known the maestro's exceptional achievements, along with the associated elements of his character, both as interpreter and artist, and as promoter of talent and excellence, educator and entrepreneur-artist.[23] Activities of the institute would involve organising symposia and exhibitions.[23] Continuing skilful media engagement were also central to the project. Geschäftsführer Dewitte stressed the importance attached to the "Nachhaltigkeit" (loosely, "sustainability") of the project. In practical terms this has been expressed through a particular emphasis in discovering and supporting younger musicians and other artists.[23]

Eliette also turned her formidable energies to supporting a new generation of artists in their work. One manifestation of this was the "Eliette von Karajan-Kulturfonds" ("Eliette von Karajan Culture Fund") launched in 2001, which made available annually, initially for a term of five years, at least 100,000 US dollars or 150,000 Swiss francs to support cultural initiatives and activities in the Canton of Graubünden, where the family had made a ski-season home together at St. Moritz since 1961. Characteristically, the allocation of grants was to be prioritized according to certain carefully thought through and specified criteria such as "internationality", "reflection of contemporary culture", "involvement or benefit of/for young people" and "cultural or inspirational usefulness to the canton or individual regions within the canton". Early award winners included a young violinist/composer, a young clarinettist, a young author of film and theatre texts, and a youthful theatre director. The unifying theme was the exceptional level of talent and early achievement already demonstrated by each of the recipients. Former award recipients who have already built significant reputations include the recorder player and conductor Maurice Steger, the mezzo-soprano Maria Riccarda Wesseling and the theatre director Felix Benesch.[2]

Another major initiative was the "Prix Eliette von Karajan", reflecting her own commitment to painting. High-profile recipients include the English artist-entrepreneur Damien Hirst in 1995,[24] the sculptress Rachel Whiteread in 1996,[25][26] the German artist Helmut Dorner in 1997[27] and the Graubünden singer-lyricist Corin Curschellas in 2003.