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Henri Meilhac

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Henri Meilhac
Born23 February 1830
1st arrondissement of Paris, France
Died6 June 1897(1897-06-06) (aged 67)
8th arrondissement of Paris, France
OccupationPlaywright

Henri Meilhac (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi mɛjak]; 23 February 1830 – 6 July 1897) was a prolific French playwright and opera librettist, best known for his collaborations with Ludovic Halévy on comic operas with music by Jacques Offenbach. He also wrote occasionally for serious works including Georges Bizet's Carmen (with Halévy) and Jules Massenet's Manon.

Life and career

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Early years

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Meilhac was born in what is now the first arrondissement of Paris, on 23 February 1830, the son of François Meilhac, a painter, and his wife Antoinette née Chomé.[1] He was educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he did not distinguish himself as a scholar but found a lifelong friend in a fellow student, Ludovic Halévy.[2]

After leaving school he worked as a commercial clerk in bookselling, and then began to write for a living, contributing articles and drawings to the Journal pour rire from 1852 to 1855. He made his theatrical debut in 1856, with a one-act comédie en vaudevilles, La Sarabande du Cardinal, with a cast of five, and music by Sylvain Mangeant, given at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in May.[3] He wrote a further seven comedies between then and 1860, when he began to work with co-authors, as was frequently done in the French theatre of the time. His first collaborator was Germain Delavigne but in 1861 he teamed up with his friend Halévy to write a one-act comedy, Le Menuet de Danaé, presented at the Théâtre des Variétés on 20 April 1861. Between then and 1881 the two collaborated on a further fifty stage works, in between working alone or with other co-authors.[4] A biographer of Meilhac has written:

Both writers recorded that their cooperation was easy and friendly; Meilhac displayed the freer imagination and the more unbridled comic verve in the creation of shameless parody and uproarious satire, while Halévy developed ideas within a craftsmanlike dramatic framework.[5]

Librettist

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Meilhac's first libretto for an opéra comique was for Louis Deffès' Les Bourguignonnes, given at the Opéra-Comique in July 1861; with Halévy, he had a huge hit with his next:Offenbach's La belle Hélène (1864). Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians says of Halévy and Meilhac:

Their achievement lay to a considerable extent in exploiting to the full the existing forms of opéra comique with its combination of music and speech, its transparently artificial plot and its topicality, which often found expression in irreverent parody. ... Situations are contrived for concerted numbers, especially at the ends of acts, and solos and ensembles are both energetic and varied. The versification of the lyrics is deft, rhyme and vocabulary are amusing, and sentiments are expressed clearly. The spoken dialogues are crisp and laconic, sometimes colloquial and never pompous except in jest. with these means Halévy and Meilhac mocked everything they observed around them in a Second Empire society that took itself too seriously.[6]

The three followed La belle Hélène with two more great successes: La vie parisienne (1866) and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867).[7] Le château à Toto (1868) did less well at the box-office,[8] but La Périchole (1868) was another success. It was based on Le carrosse du Saint-Sacrement, a comedy by Prosper Mérimée, who was to feature again in Meilhac and Halévy's work four years later.[9] Their last two collaborations with Offenbach in the 1860s – La diva (1869) and Les brigands (1869) – were less successful.[9] The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and the downfall of the Second Empire caused a strong reaction against Offenbach from the public, who identified him with the fallen regime. He left the country for a time, taking refuge in London and Vienna.[10]

Other composers for whom Meilhac wrote or co-wrote comic opera libretti were Jules Cohen, Auguste Durand, Clémence de Grandval, Hervé, Charles Lecocq, Gaston Serpette and Robert Planquette.[3]

Carmen and later

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Although the two librettists were known for their comedies, in 1872 they undertook what was, for them, an unusual assignment. Halévy's cousin Geneviève (daughter of Fromental) was married to Bizet, whom the directors of the Opéra-Comique invited to write an opera in collaboration with Halévy and Meilhac. The librettists were enthusiastic about the composer's preference for a plot based on Prosper Mérimée's story Carmen;[11] they provided a libretto with the requisite tragic ending. Nonetheless, they regarded the piece as a side venture. Just before the premiere, Halévy wrote:

There are some very, very lovely and charming things in the score, and I dare hope for a happy evening for Bizet. His interests alone matter in this instance. The thing has little importance for Meilhac and me.[12]

The management of the Opera Comique was uneasy about presenting a tragedy, and Meilhac unsuccessfully urged Bizet to resist killing Carmen off at the end of the last act.[13] Their predictions of a failure proved accurate: the piece completed its scheduled run of forty-eight performances, but played to small audiences.[14] Grove comments on the librettists' efforts for Carmen: "perhaps the most famous product of the Halévy-Meilhac collaboration, but not a very typical one ... There is some justice in the complaint that the remarkable style of Mérimée’s original narrative is lost".[6]

This was the pair's only joint venture into tragedy. They wrote seven more libretti together, of which three were for Offenbach and four for Lecocq.[6] When Offenbach returned to Paris from his voluntary exile Meilhac collaborated with Halévy and Meilhac, on revised versions of La vie parisienne and La Perichole; the three collaborators' final work together was an opéra bouffe, La boulangère a des écus.(1875). Thereafter Halévy and Meilhac provided libretti for four opéras comiques with music by Lecocq: Le petit duc (1878), La petite mademoiselle (1879), Janot (1881) and La rousotte (1881), in the last of which there was also music by Herve and Marius Boullard.[6][3]

After Halévy retired in 1882, Meilhac wrote two serious libretti for operas by Jules Massenet (Manon, 1884, with Philippe Gille) and Leo Delibes (Kassya, 1893, with Gille).[3]

In 1888, Meilhac was elected to the Académie française, joining Halévy, who was elected in 1881. He died in Paris in 1897.[6]

References

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  1. ^ "Henri Meilhac", Ancestry.com (subscription required)
  2. ^ Hansen, p. 54
  3. ^ a b c d Martin, pp. 387–391
  4. ^ Martin, pp. 271–274 and 387–391
  5. ^ Smith, Christopher. "Meilhac, Henri", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2002. (subscription required)
  6. ^ a b c d e Smith, Christopher. "Halévy, Ludovic", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2002 (subscription required)
  7. ^ Faris, pp. 141–142; and 147
  8. ^ Faris, p. 158
  9. ^ a b Faris, p. 160
  10. ^ Gammond, p. 102
  11. ^ McClary, p. 19
  12. ^ "Quoted" in McClary, p. 18
  13. ^ McClary, p. 23
  14. ^ McClary p. 28

Sources

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  • Faris, Alexander (1980). Jacques Offenbach. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-11147-3.
  • Gammond, Peter (1980). Offenbach. London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-7119-0257-2.
  • Hansen, Eric (1987). Ludovic Halévy: A Study of Frivolity and Fatalism in Nineteenth-century France. Lanham: University Press of America. ISBN 978-0-81-915887-1.
  • McClary, Susan (2002). Georges Bizet: Carmen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52-139301-0.
  • Martin, Jules (1897). Nos auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques (in French). Paris: Flammarion. OCLC 9145330.
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