Ludovic Halévy

Ludovic Halévy (1 January 1834 – 7 May 1908) was a French author and playwright, known for his collaborations with Henri Meilhac on the libretti for Georges Bizet's ''Carmen'' and comic operas by Jacques Offenbach, including ''La belle Hélène'' (1864), '' La vie parisienne'' (1866), '' La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein'' (1867) and ''La Périchole'' (1868)

Born in Paris to a musical and artistic family, Halévy worked as a civil servant after leaving school, and continued to do so, while pursuing a parallel career as a playwright, librettist and novelist. He generally wrote with collaborators, including Hector Crémieux, and on two occasions, his father, but his partnership with Meilhac, an old schoolfriend, produced the works for which he is chiefly remembered.

Life and career

Early years

Ludovic Halévy was born in the 10th arrondissement of Paris on 1 January 1834, the son of Léon Halévy and his wife, Louise Alexandrine, Lebas. Léon was descended from a German Jewish family (originally Lévy) but converted to Roman Catholicism before his marriage; his wife was a member of a well-known and influential famiy, daughter of Louis-Hippolyte Lebas, architect of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, Paris. Léon, whose elder brother was the composer Fromental Halévy, was a senior civil servant and a well-respected author.Smith, Christopher
"Halévy, Ludovic"
''Grove Music Online'', Oxford University Press, 2002

In 1845 Halévy entered the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He was an undistinguished scholar but he was well enough connected to secure admission to the French civil service after leaving school. His official career flourished but his chief interest was the theatre. Concerned that his career prospects would suffer if he were publicly associated with the theatre he adopted the pen-name Jules Servières, under which he first collaborated with the composer Jacques Offenbach. Their called ''Madame Papillon'', a one-act knockabout piece with a cast of two, opened at the Bouffes-Parisiens on 3 October 1855. Halévy abandoned the pseudonym the following January, when his real name was credited on bills for the duo's "chinoiserie musicale", '' Ba-ta-clan'', but he returned to using it soon afterwards and did so for several years.

In 1857 Offenbach organised a competition for young composers. A jury of French composers and playwrights including Daniel Auber, Fromental Halévy, Ambroise Thomas, Charles Gounod and Eugène Scribe considered seventy-eight entries; the six short-listed entrants were all asked to set the same libretto, , written by Halévy together with Léon Battu. The joint winners were Georges Bizet and Charles Lecocq, with both of whom Halévy was later to collaborate again.

Still cautious about the effect a reputation for writing operettas might have on his career, Halévy declined to have his name on the bills for his first outstanding success with Offenbach – ''Orphée aux enfers'' – and insisted that his co-librettist, Hector Crémieux, should receive all the credit and the royalties. The piece opened on 21 October 1858 and ran for 228 performances, at a time when a run of 100 nights was considered a success.

1860–1870

In 1860 Halévy collaborated with his father on the libretto for ("A Husband Without Knowing It") with music by "Monsieur de Saint-Rémy" – in reality by the Duc de Morny who dabbled in operetta both as a librettist and as a composer. Morny's patronage worked to Halévy's advantage in his official career, and soon after the première of Morny arranged for Halévy's appointment as secretary to the Corps législatif.

In 1864 Halévy began a collaboration with the author Henri Meilhac which was to last until the latter's death in 1897. The two had become friends when both at the , sharing a distaste for school life and a preference for escaping it. They were strikingly different – one biographer writes, "with Meilhac the more ebullient and fanciful, and Halévy the more staid and craftsmanlike" – but they remained close friends and now became inseparable collaborators. Accounts differ about how the partners divided the work between them. According to Siegfried Kracauer, it was always Meilhac who outlined the skeleton of the plot and sketched the big scenes and situations, which Halévy "filled in with witty comment and dialogue". Susan McClary writes, "In their collaborations, Meilhac wrote the prose dialogue, while Halévy provided the verse".

''Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' says of Halévy and Meilhac:

The 1860s saw an unbroken series of eight by Halévy, Meilhac and Offenbach. They started with a notable success, ''La belle Hélène'', which opened on 17 December 1864. Despite some hostile criticism from Théophile Gautier ("To try to ridicule the heroes of Homer is almost to blaspheme") and Jules Janin ("perfidious Meilhac, treacherous Halévy, miserable Offenbach") the piece ran through most of 1865. The three followed this hit with two more: '' La vie parisienne'' (1866) and '' La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein'' (1867). '' Le château à Toto'' (1868) did less well, 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 Halévy and Meilhac's work four years later. Their last two collaborations with Offenbach in the 1860s – ''La diva'' (1869) and '' Les brigands'' (1869) – were less successful.Faris, p. 160 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.

''Carmen'' and later

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''; they provided a libretto with the requisite tragic ending. Nonetheless, they regarded the piece as a side venture. Just before the premiere, Halévy wrote:

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. Their predictions of a failure proved accurate: the piece completed its scheduled run of forty-eight performances, but played to small audiences.McClary p. 28

This was the pair's only venture into tragedy. They wrote seven more libretti together, of which three were for Offenbach and four for Lecocq. ''Grove'' comments on their 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".

When Offenbach returned to Paris from his voluntary exile he collaborated with Halévy, without Meilhac, on an opérette, '' Pomme d'api'', and with both librettists 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. They were unwitting contributors to Johann Strauss's 1874 ''Die Fledermaus'', which plagiarised the plot of their 1872 comedy ''Le Réveillon'' (New Year's Eve).Harewood, pp. 410 and 748 They refused to allow the operetta to be produced in France.Lamb, Andrew. "Meilhac, Halévy and Viennese Operetta", ''Opera'', December 1972, p. 1066

Halévy retired in 1882. Meilhac kept writing until shortly before his death in 1897.Saint-Albin, Albert and Henri Fouquier. "Mort de Henri Meilhac", ''Le Figaro'', 7 July 1897, p. 1 Halévy died in Paris on 8 May 1908.

Other works

In addition to his theatrical works, Halévy published novels, short stories and satirical studies. He and Meilhac worked together on numerous non-musical comedies, from ("What Men Like", 1860) to ("The Little Mother", 1880).Martin, pp. 271–274

Honours

Halévy was elected as a member of the Académie française in 1881; he was appointed vice-president of the Society of Authors in 1882, and became an Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1890.

Stage works

:Source: ''Nos auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques''.

Notes, references and sources

Notes

References

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JewishEncyclopedia

{{DEFAULTSORT:Halevy, Ludovic
1834 births
1908 deaths
French Christians
Writers from Paris
Members of the Académie Française
French musical theatre lyricists
French opera librettists
French people of German-Jewish descent
19th-century French dramatists and playwrights
19th-century French male writers