VILA, Genoveva Puig I

Genoveva Puig i Vilà was a writer, music teacher, singer and composer.

From her childhood she worked as a seamstress, helping her mother, a widow of few resources, who was a seamstress. She studied music with Jaume Pahissa (composition) and Juli Pons and expanded her training with the voice physiologist Enrique O'Neill, of whom she was a preferent student and to whom she dedicated two publications in homage and remembrance.

She was the author of the lyrics and music of the songs, which she sang herself, and which she published in several editions. She was also the author of some more instrumental, quality pieces.

During the 1930s she made several concert tours in Catalonia, Madrid and Paris, accompanied by her teacher and friend Juli Pons, performing compositions of universal music, and others written by Pons or by herself. In 1934 she was elected president of the Women's Cultural Association of Barcelona.

After the Spanish Civil War she devoted herself to teaching, and between 1957 and 1960 —at least— she was a teacher and technical director of singing at the Instituto de Arte Lírico E. O'Neill in Barcelona, where she spread the benefits of the O'Neill method for education and voice recovery. One of her disciples, Carme Tulón, has adapted her teachings to correct dysphonia due to misuse of the voice. Other singers who were disciples of Genoveva Puig were Montserrat Alavedra, Glòria Denicola, Elvira Lupo, Marta Morera, Maria Pujadas and Jaume Rovira.

As a writer, she published several collections of poetry and a book of fiction. He wrote lyrics for almost all his songs, and Juli Pons i del Castillo (1895-1974) set the poem Les flors de Divendres Santo to music.

She was married to Àngel Tarrach i Barrabia, whom she divorced in 1935.