Pierre-Etienne Piestre, known as Eugène Cormon (May 5, 1810 – March 1903), was a French dramatist and librettist. He used his mother’s name, Cormon, during his career.

Cormon wrote drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

s, comedies and, from the 1840s, libretti

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

; around 150 of his works were published. He was stage manager at the Paris Opéra

Paris Opera

The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...

 from 1859 to 1870, and administrator of the Théâtre du Vaudeville

Théâtre du Vaudeville

The Théâtre du Vaudeville was a theatre in Paris. It opened on 12 January 1792 on rue de Chartres. Its directors, Piis and Barré, mainly put on "petites pièces mêlées de couplets sur des airs connus", including vaudevilles....

 from 1874.

His libretti include Les dragons de Villars

Les dragons de Villars

Les dragons de Villars is an opéra-comique in three acts by Aimé Maillart to a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Joseph-Philippe Lockroy.-Performance history:...

(with Lockroy), Gastibelza (with d’Ennery) and Les pêcheurs de Catane (with Carré) for Maillart, Les pêcheurs de perles

Les pêcheurs de perles

Les pêcheurs de perles is an opera in three acts by the French composer Georges Bizet, to a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. It was first performed on 30 September 1863 at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris, and was given 18 performances in its initial run...

(with Carré) for Bizet, Robinson Crusoé

Robinson Crusoé

Robinson Crusoé is an opéra comique, or operetta, by Jacques Offenbach.The French libretto was written by Eugène Cormon and Hector-Jonathan Crémieux, which was loosely adapted from the novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, though the work owes more to British pantomime than to the book...

(with Crémieux) for Offenbach, and Les Bleuets (with Trianon

Henri Trianon

Henri Trianon was a French critic, translator and librettist.He was an artistic and literary critic in Paris also becoming a teacher. In 1842 he became under-librarian of Sainte Geneviève, and librarian there in 1849...

) for Cohen.

The Fontainebleau act of Don Carlos

Don Carlos

Don Carlos is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French language libretto by Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry, based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller...

by Verdi is based on part of Philip II, King of Spain (Philippe II, Roi d’Espagne), an 1846 play by Cormon.

At the Moscow Art Theatre

Moscow Art Theatre

The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1898. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas...

 in 1927 the seminal Russian theatre practitioner

Theatre practitioner

Theatre practitioner is a modern term to describe someone who both creates theatrical performances and who produces a theoretical discourse that informs his or her practical work. A theatre practitioner may be a director, a dramatist, an actor, or—characteristically—often a combination of these...

 Constantin Stanislavski staged Cormon's melodrama

Melodrama

The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

 The Gérard Sisters (Les Soeurs Gérard), which he co-wrote with Adolphe d'Ennery

Adolphe d'Ennery

Adolphe Philippe d'Ennery or Dennery was a French Jewish dramatist and novelist.Born in Paris, his real surname was Philippe...

.

Sources

• Benedetti, Jean. 1999. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413525201.
• Budden, J. 1985. Verdi. London: Dent & Sons.
• Walsh, T. J. 1981. Second Empire Opera: The Théâtre Lyrique Paris 1851-1870. London: John Calder.
• Wright, L. 1997. "Eugène Cormon." In The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. London and New York: Macmillan.