Project Description
Elisabeth Keller was born in Monza 6 July 1891; her father, Robert Keller, was a textile manufacturer in Zurich, and her grandfather Karl Keller born in 1814 was the founder of the Tonhalle Society of Zurich, the largest Swiss symphonic music institution. Elisabetta’s mother was Susanne Roux, the descendant of two well-known families of Swiss artists (her grandfather Gustave Roux was a prominent Geneva painter and her uncle Eugène Rambert a famous poet). She passed her childhood in Monza at Villa Keller, a residence by Piermarini, where artists and musicians were welcomed thanks to the patronage of Robert Keller – an art collector and lover of photography and music. Brought up in a culturally stimulating atmosphere, she succeeded in satisfying her artistic inclinations, hesitating between music and painting. She actually studied the piano with Vincenzo Appiani, and just as passionately devoted herself to singing – to the extent of being admitted to the chorus of La Scala, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. Her youth, lived “in the spell of an old garden” under “the sad and solemn regard” of a great artist – Mosè Bianchi – who there sought peace and tranquillity, was marked above all by the example of another patriarchal figure who directed her choices – the painter Pompeo Mariani. In 1915 she married Giovanni Battista Pitscheider, nephew of Pompeo Mariani, and had two children by him: Benedetta (1916-2003) and Umberto (1918-2013). She died in San Francisco, California, February 19 1969