Hervé (composer)
Encyclopedia
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...
singer, 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...
, librettist, conductor and scene painter, whom Ernest Newman
Ernest Newman
Ernest Newman was an English music critic and musicologist. Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians describes him as "the most celebrated British music critic in the first half of the 20th century." His style of criticism, aiming at intellectual objectivity in contrast to the more subjective...
, following Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn was a Venezuelan, naturalised French, composer, conductor, music critic and diarist. Best known as a composer of songs, he wrote in the French classical tradition of the mélodie....
, credited with inventing the genre of operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
in Paris.
Life
Hervé was born in HoudainHoudain
Houdain is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France.-Geography:A former coalmining, now a light industrial and farming town, situated some south of Béthune at the junction of the D86, D301 and the D341 roads...
near Arras
Arras
Arras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...
. Part Spanish by birth, he became a choirboy at the Church of Saint-Roch, Paris
Église Saint-Roch
The Church of Saint Roch is a late Baroque church in Paris. Located at 284 rue Saint-Honoré, in the 1st arrondissement, it was built between 1653 and 1722.- History :...
. His musical promise was noted, and he was enrolled in the Conservatoire and studied with Daniel Auber
Daniel Auber
Daniel François Esprit Auber was a French composer.-Biography:The son of a Paris print-seller, Auber was born in Caen in Normandy. Though his father expected him to continue in the print-selling business, he also allowed his son to learn how to play several musical instruments...
, and by the age of fifteen was serving as organist
Organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists...
at Bicêtre Hospital
Bicêtre Hospital
The Bicêtre Hospital is located in Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, which is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It lies 4.5 km from the center of Paris. The Bicêtre Hospital was originally planned as a military hospital, with construction begun in 1634. With the help of Vincent de Paul, it was...
and a stage vocalist in provincial theatres, where he trained his fine tenor voice. He won a competition in 1845 for the prestigious Paris post of organist at the Church of Saint-Eustache
Église Saint-Eustache, Paris
L’église Saint-Eustache is a church in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, built between 1532 and 1632.Situated at the entrance to Paris’s ancient markets and the beginning of rue Montorgueil, the Église de Saint-Eustache is considered a masterpiece of late Gothic architecture...
, while he doubled with his theatrical music career, a situation that he turned to advantage years later, in his most famous work, 'Mam'zelle Nitouche
Mam'zelle Nitouche
Mam'zelle Nitouche is a vaudeville-opérette by Hervé. The libretto was by Henri Meilhac and Albert Millaud.-Performance history:It was first performed at the Théâtre des Variétés, Paris on 26 January 1883.- Roles :-Synopsis:...
.
Before he became musical director of the Théâtre du Palais Royal
Palais Royal
The Palais-Royal, originally called the Palais-Cardinal, is a palace and an associated garden located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris...
in 1851, he composed a one-act tableau grotesque, a burlesque on Don Quixote titled Don Quichotte et Sancho Pança
Don Quichotte et Sancho Pança
Don Quichotte et Sancho Pança is a one-act 'tableau grotesque' or 'grotesque scene' with music by Hervé after Cervantes, first produced in 1847, which has been dubbed ‘the first French operetta’, and a precursor of the opéra bouffe....
. It was conceived as a vehicle for the actor Desiré, who was short and plump, accompanied by the tall and gangling Hervé, as he was now calling himself, in order to distance his two personas. It was staged at Adolphe Adam
Adolphe Adam
Adolphe Charles Adam was a French composer and music critic. A prolific composer of operas and ballets, he is best known today for his ballets Giselle and Le corsaire , his operas Le postillon de Lonjumeau , Le toréador and Si j'étais roi , and his Christmas...
's Opéra-National
Opéra-National
The Opéra-National was a Parisian opera company founded by the French composer Adolphe Adam in 1847 in order to provide an alternative to the two primary companies performing French opera in Paris, the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique...
, and achieved a great success in 1848, in spite of the distracting revolution
Revolutions of 1848
The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It was the first Europe-wide collapse of traditional authority, but within a year reactionary...
: furthermore, according to the composer Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn was a Venezuelan, naturalised French, composer, conductor, music critic and diarist. Best known as a composer of songs, he wrote in the French classical tradition of the mélodie....
, the farcical pot-pourri was "simply the first French operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
". He had also composed musical entertainments to keep the patients entertained at the Bicêtre Hospital, and these gained the notice of producers.
Thus Hervé was the founder of a new era of French operettas. Through his Folies concertantes, a small theater stage he took over in 1854 and for which he wrote many works, he became the forerunner of the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens
Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens
The Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens is a Parisian theatre which was founded in 1855 by the composer Jacques Offenbach for the performance of opéra bouffe and operetta. The current theatre is located in the 2nd arrondissement at 4 rue Monsigny with an entrance at the back at 65 Passage Choiseul. In...
of Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
, whose early efforts he produced at his theatre, renovated as the Folies-Nouveaux. The restrictive license of the Folies concertantes permitted only spectacles-concerts, with no more than two characters, in a single act, stringencies imposed on Offenbach as well, but which encouraged Hervé to experiment with genres, before more flexible rules were established in the following decade. A jealous rivalry soon developed between Hervé and Offenbach, which was only patched up in 1878, when Hervé sang in a revival of Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers. He died in Paris.
Works
Hervé wrote more than a hundred and twenty operettas, among which were:- Les folies dramatiques (1853), with two other librettists, which parodied all the forms of entertainment in Paris, comedy, tragedy, vaudevilleVaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, ballet and opera. - Les chevaliers de la Table Ronde (Bouffes ParisiensThéâtre des Bouffes ParisiensThe Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens is a Parisian theatre which was founded in 1855 by the composer Jacques Offenbach for the performance of opéra bouffe and operetta. The current theatre is located in the 2nd arrondissement at 4 rue Monsigny with an entrance at the back at 65 Passage Choiseul. In...
, 17 November 1866) - L'œil crevé (Folies-Dramatiques, 12 October 1867)
- ChilpéricChilpéric (operetta)Chilpéric is an opéra bouffe with libretto and music by Hervé, first produced in Paris on 24 October 1868 at the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatique in Paris...
(1868) - Le petit Faust (1869)
- Les Turcs (1869)
- Le trône d'Écosse (1871)
- La veuve du Malabar (1873)
- La belle poule (1875)
- Lili (1882)
- Mam'zelle NitoucheMam'zelle NitoucheMam'zelle Nitouche is a vaudeville-opérette by Hervé. The libretto was by Henri Meilhac and Albert Millaud.-Performance history:It was first performed at the Théâtre des Variétés, Paris on 26 January 1883.- Roles :-Synopsis:...
(1883)