Table of Contents

An International Child
Life with Mother
A Woman of the World
The Sewing Machine and the Lyre
Marriage and Music
La Belle Epoque
Renovations
Modern Times
The Astonishing Years
Shelter from the Storm
The Magic of Everyday Things
Cottages of the Elite, Palaces of the People
A Pride of Protégés
Mademoiselle
All Music is Modern
The Beautiful Kingdom of Sounds

Reviews

A splendid biography of the munificent princess. --Alex Ross [online at http://www.therestisnoise.com/2011/04/merci-beaucoup-domo-arigato.html]
*.*

Superb new biography. . . The list of her achievements -- music dedicated to her, works commissioned by her, artists supported by her -- are all scrupulously recorded here. . . a dazzling and inspiring array. . . In Sylvia Kahan Winnaretta [Singer-Polignac] has a biographer able to explain her special mixture of arrogance, intelligence and bravery.
*THE TIMES*

Her book is magnificently readable. The reader's complaint might be that it stopped after 550 pages and has not yet been made into a movie.
*THE VILLAGER*

A pleasure to read and a good reference book to keep. . . [Winnaretta's] beautiful kingdom created a musical reality that we enjoy to this day.
*JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR WOMEN IN MUSIC*

The list of those who owed much to [the Princesse de Polignac] is simply breathtaking. . . This biography by Sylvia Kahan [now available . . . in paperback] is easy to read as an adventure story just as much as it is a sideways glance at over half a century's cultural history.
*GRAMOPHONE*

This is a book to be referred to again and again. . . an authoritative study that will give any interested reader an overview of a fascinating artistic epoch with a complex and intriguing survivor at its helm. Underneath the forbidding exterior, 'Aunt Winnie' was a sensitive and selfless philanthropist, both acutely perceptive of genuine talent in others and wide-ranging in her patronage. These aspects shine clearly through the mine of detailed information in Sylvia Kahan's important new study.
*TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT*

Kahan appears to have gotten as close to Singer-Polignac as any scholar could in the many years she worked on this good book.
*NOTES, March 2005*

Kahan does justice to this inspiring woman's legacy by crafting a biography that is heartfelt and stimulating.
*FRENCH REVIEW, 2006*

Wonderfully researched. . . Sensitively sets Singer Polignac's vibrant lesbianism in the context of the times.
*CLASSICAL MUSIC*