Anna Caroline Oury

Anna Caroline Oury (née de Belleville), also known as Ninette de Belleville, Ninette von Belleville or Ninette de Belleville-Oury (24 January 1806 – 22 July 1880), was a German pianist and composer of French ancestry. Life and career Anna Caroline de Belleville, often referred to as “Ninette”, was born in Landshut, Bavaria, Germany. She was the daughter of a French aristocrat who was the director of the national Court Opera in Mannheim. She studied with Carl Czerny in Vienna between 1816 and 1820, where she met Beethoven and heard him improvise. In 1829 she traveled to Warsaw where Chopin heard her play impressively enough for him to write about it in a letter, praising her “excellent” playing for its lightness and elegance. Twelve years later, in 1841, Chopin dedicated his Waltz in F minor, Op. Posth. 70, No. 2, to Oury, though it went unpublished until 1855. In July 1831 she made her London debut in Her Majesty’s Theatre with Niccolò Paganini and in October she married Antonio James Oury (1800–1883), a violinist at the King’s Theatre in London and the two toured as a duo. The remainder of Anna Caroline Oury’s career was spent focusing on composition until her retirement in 1866,