Louis-Auguste Florimond Ronger (30 June 1825 – 4 November 1892), who used the pseudonym Hervé (), was a French singer,
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and def ...
,
librettist
A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, 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 ...
, conductor and scene painter, whom
Ernest Newman, following
Reynaldo Hahn, credited with inventing the genre of
operetta in Paris.
Life
Hervé was born in
Houdain near
Arras
Arras ( , ; ; historical ) is the prefecture of the Pas-de-Calais department, which forms part of the region of Hauts-de-France; before the reorganization of 2014 it was in Nord-Pas-de-Calais. The historic centre of the Artois region, with a ...
. Part Spanish by birth, he became a choirboy at the
Church of Saint-Roch, Paris. His musical promise was noted, and he was enrolled in the
Conservatoire and studied with
Daniel Auber, and by the age of fifteen was serving as
organist at
Bicêtre Hospital 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, 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''.
Before he became
musical director of the
Théâtre du Palais Royal in 1851, he composed a one-act ''tableau grotesque'', a
burlesque on ''
Don Quixote
, the full title being ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'', is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615, the novel is considered a founding work of Western literature and is of ...
'' titled ''
Don Quichotte et Sancho Pança''. 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 Charles Adam (; 24 July 1803 – 3 May 1856) was a French composer, teacher and music critic. A prolific composer for the theatre, he is best known today for his ballets ''Giselle'' (1841) and ''Le corsaire'' (1856), his operas ''Le post ...
's
Opéra-National, and achieved a great success in 1848, in spite of the distracting
revolution
In political science, a revolution (, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements ...
: furthermore, according to the composer
Reynaldo Hahn, the farcical pot-pourri was "simply the first French
operetta". 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 of
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach (; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera ''The Tales of Hoffmann''. He was a p ...
, whose early efforts he produced at his theatre, renovated as the Folies-Nouvelles. Many of Hervé's early one act pieces are topical skits satirizing current events and were never revived. 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 at the age of 67.
Since 2015, a number of his works have been revived by
Palazzetto Bru Zane in tours of France and Italy.
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, ''
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France in the middle of the 19th century. A ''vaudeville'' was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a drama ...
'', ballet and opera.
*''
Les chevaliers de la Table Ronde'' (
Bouffes Parisiens, 17 November 1866)
*''
L'œil crevé'' (Folies-Dramatiques, 12 October 1867)
*''
Chilpéric'' (1868)
*''
Le petit Faust'' (1869)
Information about ''Little Faust'' on Broadway
/ref>
*''Les Turcs'' (1869)
*''Le trône d'Écosse'' (1871)
*''La veuve du Malabar'' (1873)
*''La belle poule'' (1875)
* '' La roussotte'' (with Charles Lecocq and Marius Boullard, Théâtre des Variétés, 1881)
*''Lili'' (1882)
*'' Mam'zelle Nitouche'' (1883)
References
External links
*
*
List of works by Hervé
at the Index to Opera and Ballet Sources Online
{{DEFAULTSORT:Herve
1825 births
1892 deaths
19th-century French classical composers
French classical organists
French opera composers
French male opera composers
French operetta composers
French Romantic composers
19th-century French male musicians
French male classical organists
19th-century French organists