Gustave Charpentier
Encyclopedia
Dieuze
Dieuze is a commune in the Moselle department in Lorraine in north-eastern France.-People:Dieuze was the birthplace of:*Charles Hermite, mathematician*Edmond François Valentin About, novelist, publicist and journalist*Émile Friant, painter...
, Moselle
Moselle
Moselle is a department in the east of France named after the river Moselle.- History :Moselle is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...
on 25 June 1860, died Paris, 18 February 1956) was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, best known for his opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
Louise
Louise (opera)
Louise is an opera in four acts by Gustave Charpentier to an original French libretto by the composer, with some contributions by Saint-Pol-Roux, a symbolist poet and inspiration of the surrealists....
.
Life and career
Charpentier (no relation, incidentally, to the seventeenth-century composer Marc-Antoine CharpentierMarc-Antoine Charpentier
Marc-Antoine Charpentier, , was a French composer of the Baroque era.Exceptionally prolific and versatile, he produced compositions of the highest quality in several genres...
) was the son of a baker, and with the assistance of a rich benefactor he studied violin at the conservatoire in Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
before entering the Paris Conservatoire in 1881. There he took lessons in composition under Jules Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...
(from 1885) and had a reputation of wanting to shock his professors. In 1887 won the Prix de Rome
Prix de Rome
The Prix de Rome was a scholarship for arts students, principally of painting, sculpture, and architecture. It was created, initially for painters and sculptors, in 1663 in France during the reign of Louis XIV. It was an annual bursary for promising artists having proved their talents by...
for his cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
Didon. During the time in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
that the prize gave him, he wrote the orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
l suite Impressions d'Italie and began work on the libretto
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...
and music for what would become his best-known work, the opera Louise
Louise (opera)
Louise is an opera in four acts by Gustave Charpentier to an original French libretto by the composer, with some contributions by Saint-Pol-Roux, a symbolist poet and inspiration of the surrealists....
.
Charpentier returned to Paris, settling in Montmartre
Montmartre
Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
, and continued to compose, including song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
s on texts by Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
and Voltaire
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...
. He eventually completed Louise, and it was accepted for production by the Opéra-Comique
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...
. A realistic portrait of Parisian working-class life, it is sometimes considered a French example of verismo
Verismo
Verismo was an Italian literary movement which peaked between approximately 1875 and the early 1900s....
opera.
The premiere of Louise on February 2, 1900 under the baton of André Messager
André Messager
André Charles Prosper Messager , was a French composer, organist, pianist, conductor and administrator. His stage compositions included ballets and 30 opéra comiques and operettas, among which Véronique, had lasting success, with Les p'tites Michu and Monsieur Beaucaire also enjoying international...
was an immediate success. Soon this work was being performed all over Europe and America, and it brought Charpentier concomitant acclaim. It also launched the career of the Scottish soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
Mary Garden
Mary Garden
Mary Garden , was a Scottish operatic soprano with a substantial career in France and America in the first third of the 20th century...
, who took over the title role during an early performance. In late 1935 the composer supervised the abridged score used in a studio recording of around 70 minutes of the opera, conducted by Eugène Bigot
Eugène Bigot
Eugène Bigot was a French composer and conductor. He also taught at the Conservatoire de Paris where his notable pupils included Émilien Allard, Louis de Froment, Henri-Claude Fantapié, António Fortunato de Figueiredo, Karel Husa, Paul Kuentz, Jean-Bernard Pommier, Pierre Rolland, and Mikis...
. A film adaptation
Louise (film)
Louise is a 1939 French musical film directed by Abel Gance. It was screened out of competition at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. It is based on the opera of the same name by Gustave Charpentier.-Cast:* Grace Moore - Louise* Georges Thill - Julien...
of the work followed in 1939 with Grace Moore
Grace Moore
Grace Moore was an American operatic soprano and actress in musical theatre and film. She was nicknamed the "Tennessee Nightingale." Her films helped to popularize opera by bringing it to a larger audience.-Early life:...
in the title role. At the revival of Louise at the Opéra-Comique on 28 February 1950, celebrating the 50th anniversary of its creation and the 90th birthday of its composer, it was hoped that Charpentier himself might conduct the performance, but in the end André Cluytens
André Cluytens
André Cluytens was a Belgian-born French conductor who was active in the concert hall, opera house and recording studio. His repertoire extended from Viennese classics through French composers to 20th century works...
did so, with the composer conducting the 'Chant de l’apothéose' after the 3rd Act.
Louise is still occasionally performed today, with the soprano aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
"Depuis le jour" a popular recital piece.
In 1902, Charpentier founded the Conservatoire Populaire Mimi Pinson, intended to provide a free artistic education to Paris's working girls. However, he became unproductive as a composer. He worked on a sequel to Louise, Julien, ou la vie d'un poète
Julien (opera)
Julien, ou La vie du poète is a 1914 poème lyrique or opera by composer Gustave Charpentier. The work is devised in a prologue and four acts and uses a French libretto by the composer. Julien is a sequel to Charpentier's Louise and describes the artistic aspirations of Louise’s suitor Julien...
, but it was quickly forgotten after its tepidly received 1913 premiere. For the rest of his extremely long life, Charpentier wrote hardly any further music.
He was, nevertheless, no recluse. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, he started the Œuvre de Mimi Pinson and Cocarde de Mimi Pinson to aid wounded soldiers. He was awarded the Légion d'honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
in 1900, became a Commandeur in 1930, and a Grand Officier in 1950.
In 1934, he conducted a recording of his Impressions d'Italie with a Paris symphony orchestra.
Charpentier's brother Victor (also born Dieuze
Dieuze
Dieuze is a commune in the Moselle department in Lorraine in north-eastern France.-People:Dieuze was the birthplace of:*Charles Hermite, mathematician*Edmond François Valentin About, novelist, publicist and journalist*Émile Friant, painter...
, on 23 July 1867) was a cellist in the orchestra of the Paris Opera
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...
and later a conductor of popular symphony concerts in Paris.
Compositions
- Didon, Scène dramatique - 1887
- Impressions d'Italie - 1892
- La vie du poète - symphonie-drame - 1892
- Sérénade à Watteau (words by Verlaine) - 1896
- La couronnement de la muse - spectacle - 1897
- LouiseLouise (opera)Louise is an opera in four acts by Gustave Charpentier to an original French libretto by the composer, with some contributions by Saint-Pol-Roux, a symbolist poet and inspiration of the surrealists....
- 1900 - Munich - symphonic poem - 1911
- Julien, ou La vie du poèteJulien (opera)Julien, ou La vie du poète is a 1914 poème lyrique or opera by composer Gustave Charpentier. The work is devised in a prologue and four acts and uses a French libretto by the composer. Julien is a sequel to Charpentier's Louise and describes the artistic aspirations of Louise’s suitor Julien...
- 1913 - L'amour au faubourg - 1913 (unperformed)
- Orphée - 1931 (unfinished)
- Songs