In the footsteps of Lise Cristiani
In a documentary film, Sol Gabetta traces the life, concerts and breathtaking travels of the first cellist to perform in public.
Sol Gabetta is Lise Cristiani - at least that's what the blurry cover of her latest album is supposed to suggest. It celebrates the 200th birthday of the French cellist with insights into her concert repertoire, works by Offenbach, Schubert, Rossini and others (Sony classical 12372444).
Parallel to the sound recording, a 53-minute documentary film was made in which the Argentinian cellist and her husband, the French violin maker and restorer Balthazar Soulier, follow in the footsteps of this mysterious musician. With the cello to the end of the world alludes to Cristiani's concert tour to Siberia in 1847. In 1852, at the age of 27, she died of a cholera infection, which she had contracted on a trip to the Caucasus, where she played for soldiers.
The atmospherically dense film chronologically recounts the life of the first female cellist to perform in public. The cello was considered immoral, even scandalous, for women because it had to be held with legs apart. The journalist Waldemar Kamer, who found the birth record in an estate, reports on Cristiani's origins and how she grew up as an illegitimate child with her grandparents.
Visits to original locations, combined with historical images, provide an insight into the Paris of her childhood. Sol Gabetta not only discovers Cristiani's concert programs together with Balthazar Soulier, but also plays her cello for a few minutes in the Stradivari Museum in Cremona. Here, however, the film remains on the surface. We would have liked to know more from Sol Gabetta about the exact sound of the instrument, which cost 7,000 francs at the time and is now worth around 20 million euros. Was it particularly robust so that it survived these extreme climatic conditions on its travels without damage? Balthazar Soulier could certainly have told us something about this. And what can we say about Cristiani's playing based on the repertoire? After all, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy composed his only Song without words op. 109 for cello and piano is dedicated to her. Unfortunately, apart from quoting a few contemporary reviews, this also remains in the dark.
With the cello to the end of the world - Sol Gabetta in the footsteps of Lise Cristiani. Film by Simone Jung. Hessischer Rundfunk/Arte. Available in the ARD media library until December 2026.
