Hervé (composer)

Hervé, real name Florimond Ronger, (June 30, 1825 – November 4, 1892) [The information in this article, based on a translation of its German Wikipedia equivalent, is supplemented by the account of Hervé's career in Richard Traubner, "Operetta: A Theatrical History" 2003:20ff] was a French singer, composer, librettist, conductor and scene painter, whom Ernest Newman, following Reynaldo Hahn, credited with inventing the genre of operetta in Paris. [Ernest Newman, in Louis Biancolli, ed. "The Opera Reader" (New York: McGraw-Hill) 1953:317.]

Life

Hervé was born in Houdain near Arras. Part-Spanish by birth, he became a choirboy at the Church of Saint-Roch, Paris. His 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 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-Eustace, 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" 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's venture of a "Théâtre National", and achieved a great success in 1848, in spite of the distracting revolution: furthermore, according to the composer Reynaldo Hahn the farcical pot-pourri was "simply the first French operetta". [Quoted with reservations, for the term had already been used, by Traubner 2003:20.]

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, 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, [Taubner 2003.] among which were:
*"Les folies dramatiques" (1853), with two other librettists, parodied all the forms of entertainment in Paris, comedy, tragedy, "vaudeville", ballet and opera.
*"Les chevaliers de la Table Ronde" (Bouffes Parisiens, 17 November 1866)
*"L'œil crevé" (Folies-Dramatiques, 12 October 1867) [Richard Traubner, "Operetta: A Theatrical History" 2003:22. It was produced in New York in 1868, at J. Grau's Theatre Français, as "The Pierced Eye" and its libretto published. It was a success too in Vienna and in London.]

*"Chilpéric" (1868)
*"Le petit Faust" (1869) [ [http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=438896 Information about "Little Faust" on Broadway] ]
*"Les Turcs" (1869)
*"Le trône d'Écosse" (1871)
*"La veuve du Malabar" (1873)
*"La belle poule" (1875)
*"Mam'zelle Nitouche" (1883)

References

External links

*imdb name|id=0381187|name=Hervé