Savigliano, near Turin, 28 Aug 1827 - Paris, 25 Oct 1904).

Italian violinist and composer.
She learnt solfège from her father and studied the violin with Giovanni Ferrero, Mauro Caldera and Giovanni Morra.
She made her début on 17 April 1836 in the theatre of Mondovi before moving with her family to France.
After giving five concerts in Marseilles, she went to Paris in 1837 and met Lafont, who recognized her talents and took her with him on tours to The Hague, Amsterdam and elsewhere in the Netherlands.
In December 1836 she gave a benefit concert in Brussels which marked the beginning of her lifelong concern for the poor.
Early in 1837 the Milanollo family went to England. Teresa performed with Johann Strauss and was for a time the protégée and pupil of Francis Mori.
In 1838 she toured Wales with the harpist Charles Bochsa, giving 40 concerts within a month.
She then returned with her family to France and began teaching music to her younger sister Maria (b Savigliano, 19 July 1832; d Paris, 21 Oct 1848) before both completed their violin training with Bériot.
In 1840–41 Teresa studied with Habeneck in Paris, and in 1842 the sisters began a series of extended European concert tours which took them to England, Belgium, France, Germany, Bohemia, Switzerland and northern Italy, rivalling Paganini in artistic and financial success.
For a time they settled in Brussels, where Teresa studied composition with Ferdinand Kufferath.
During their second visit to England, in 1845, they appeared at the Philharmonic Concerts; their benefit concerts and quartet performances in Lyons surpassed the earlier successes of Thalberg, H.W. Ernst and even Liszt in that city.
In autumn 1848 Maria died suddenly of tuberculosis; Teresa went into mourning for two months before giving a concert in Paris for the benefit of the Association des Artistes Musiciens.
She virtually retired for the next two years, giving only benefit concerts.
In 1852 she resumed full-time playing, touring France, Switzerland, Germany and Austria.
From 1855 to 1857 she made few appearances.
The day of her last public concert, on 16 April 1857, she married Théodore Parmentier, a military engineer and an amateur musician of some repute, who wrote for the Revue et gazette musicale.
The high point of Milanollo’s career was her six-year period of concert tours with her sister.
Teresa’s playing was said to be full of warmth and feeling, while Maria’s was brilliant and sparkling; to these characteristics they owed their respective nicknames, Mlle Adagio and Mlle Staccato.
A Frankfurt critic wrote of them: ‘Maria plays like a prodigy, Teresa like an angel’.
But the most eloquent praise of Teresa’s playing came from Joachim who, according to Moser, said that "he had hardly ever heard then, or since, such accurate or charming violin playing; her technique was secure in every respect, and even in very difficult passages, her bow moved fluently and her tone was full of inner warmth.
She was for him, in short, one of the most delightful and sympathetic artists that he had ever met."
Milanollo’s compositions include opera transcriptions for two violins and orchestra, numerous pieces for solo violin (including a Fantaisie élégiaque, written in memory of her sister in 1853) and an Ave Maria for male chorus.

Bibliography:

J. Fétis: Biographie universelle des musiciens
A. Moser: Geschichte des Violinspiels (Berlin, 1923, rev. 2/1966-7 by H.J. Nösselt)
A.M. Clarke: Les soeurs Milanollo: études biographiques, aristiques et morales (Lyons, 1847)
A. Pougin: ‘Les soeurs Milanollo’, Rivista musicale italiana, XXII (1916)
E. van der Straeten: The History of the Violin (London, 1933/R)
Grove Music Online: www.oxfordmusiconline.com

Author:

E. Heron-Allen / Albert Mell