HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Augustin Eugène Scribe (; 24 December 179120 February 1861) was a French dramatist and librettist. He is known for writing "
well-made play The well-made play (french: la pièce bien faite, pronounced ) is a dramatic genre from nineteenth-century theatre, developed by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. It is characterised by concise plotting, compelling narrative and a largely stan ...
s" ("pièces bien faites"), a mainstay of popular theatre for over 100 years, and as the librettist of many of the most successful grand operas and opéras-comiques. Born to a middle-class Parisian family, Scribe was intended for a legal career, but was drawn to the theatre, and began writing plays while still in his teens. His early years as a playwright were unsuccessful, but from 1815 onwards he prospered. Writing, usually with one or more collaborators, he produced several hundred stage works. He wrote to entertain the public rather than educate it. Many of his plays were written in a formulaic manner which aimed at neatness of plot and focus on dramatic incident rather than naturalism, depth of characterisation or intellectual substance. For this he was much criticised by intellectuals, but the "well-made play" remained established in the theatre in France and elsewhere long after his death. In 1813 Scribe wrote his first opera libretto. From 1822 until his death he was closely associated with the composer Daniel Auber for whom he wrote or co-wrote 39 librettos, among them that for the first French grand opera, '' La Muette de Portici'' (1828). His second most frequent musical partner was Giacomo Meyerbeer, who took grand opera further and made it a dominant feature of French musical life. Among the other composers with whom Scribe worked were Adolphe Adam, Adrien Boieldieu, Gaetano Donizetti, Fromental Halévy, Jacques Offenbach and Giuseppe Verdi. Scribe's librettos are still performed in opera houses around the world, and although few of his non-musical plays have been revived frequently in the 20th or 21st centuries, his influence on subsequent generations of playwrights in France and elsewhere was profound and lasting.


Life and career


Early years

Scribe was born in Paris on 24 December 1791, at the family house in the Rue Saint-Denis near Les Halles. His father, a silk merchant, died while the boy was an infant, but left his widow comfortably off. Scribe was educated at the prestigious Collège Sainte-Barbe, where he was an outstanding pupil, winning the college's top prize in his final year and being ceremonially crowned with a laurel wreath at the
Académie Française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosop ...
. His mother intended him to pursue a career in the legal profession, and sent him to study with Louis-Ferdinand Bonnet, a leading Parisian lawyer. Although he was conscientious in his studies, Scribe's ambition was to write for the theatre, and when his mother died in 1807 he turned from the law, and together with his former classmate
Germain Delavigne Louis Marie Germain Delavigne (1 February 1790 – 3 November 1868) was a French playwright and librettist. Delavigne was born in Giverny to Louis-Augustin-Anselme Delavigne, a surveyor of the French royal forests, and his wife. He was the brothe ...
he set his sights on a theatrical career. His first piece, a one-act vaudeville ''Le Prétendu par hasard'', was produced anonymously at the Théâtre des Variétés in January 1810 and was a failure. Numerous other plays, written in collaboration with Delavigne and others, followed; but for the next five years Scribe earned little from the theatre and was reliant on his inheritance.Larousse, p. 424 He had modest successes with ''Les Derviches'' (1811) and ''L'Auberge'', (1812), both written with Delavigne for the Théâtre du Vaudeville. In 1813 he wrote the first of three melodramas, of which the third, ''Les Frères invisibles'', did reasonably well at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. In the same year he wrote his first opera libretto, for Luc Guénée's opéra comique ''La Chambre à coucher''.Schneider, Herbert
"Scribe, (Auguste) Eugène"
''Grove Music Online'', Oxford University Press, 2001
Scribe's first substantial success came in 1815, with the comedy ''Une Nuit de la garde nationale'' (''A Night at the National Guard''), a collaboration with his friend Charles Delestre-Poirson. Over the next five years Scribe built a position as a dramatist, writing under his own name or pseudonyms, usually in collaboration with others. In 1820 Delestre-Poirson established the Théâtre du Gymnase, and opened on 23 December with ''Le Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle'' by Scribe and two friends who had also abandoned law for the theatre, Baron Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier, who wrote under the pen name
Mélesville Baron Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier, pen-name Mélesville (13 December 1787 in Paris – 7 November 1865 in Marly-le-Roi) was a French dramatist. The playwright Mélesville fils was his son. Life The son of Honoré-Nicolas-Marie Duveyrier, M� ...
, and Charles Moreau. Delestre-Poirson gave Scribe a remunerative contract that made him, in effect, the theatre's resident playwright, with the Gymnase having first call on his services.


1820s

Between 1820 and 1830 Scribe wrote more than a hundred plays for the Gymnase, and librettos and plays for the Comédie-Française, the Opéra, the Opéra-Comique and seven other theatres. In 1822 he began a collaboration with the composer Daniel Auber that lasted for 41 years and produced 39 operas. Auber's biographer Robert Letellier writes that the names of Scribe and Auber became as linked in French minds as those of
Gilbert and Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ...
later were in British ones. The partners' first collaboration was ''Leicester, ou Le château de Kenilworth'', a three-act opéra comique, with a plot that Scribe, in collaboration with Mélesville, derived from
Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy ...
's
historical romance Historical romance is a broad category of mass-market fiction focusing on romantic relationships in historical periods, which Walter Scott helped popularize in the early 19th century. Varieties Viking These books feature Vikings during the Dar ...
''
Kenilworth Kenilworth ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the Warwick District in Warwickshire, England, south-west of Coventry, north of Warwick and north-west of London. It lies on Finham Brook, a tributary of the River Sowe, which joins the ...
''. As with his plays, Scribe customarily wrote his librettos in collaboration with other writers. For Auber he worked with, among others,
X. B. Saintine Xavier Boniface Saintine (10 July 1798 – 21 January 1865) was a French dramatist and novelist. Biography He was born Joseph Xavier Boniface in Paris in 1798. In 1823, he produced a volume of poetry in the manner of the Romanticists, entit ...
, E.-J.-E. Mazères and Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges as well as Mélesville and Delavigne. Letellier writes that "part of Scribe's genius lay in his careful selection of his collaborators". A story grew that Scribe would hire one man to write the narrative, a different one for the dialogue, a third for the jokes, a fourth for the lyrics, and so on. The story was apocryphal, but literary collaboration was a French tradition in which Scribe was thoroughly at home: During his career Scribe worked with more than 60 co-authors, in addition to writing more than 130 stage works on his own. He wrote or co-wrote librettos for 48 composers. During the 1820s Scribe collaborated with Adrien Boieldieu on '' La Dame blanche'' (1825), a Romantic opera based on stories by Walter Scott. Scribe's libretto was one of the first to introduce the supernatural into an operatic plot. The piece was enormously popular, and reached its thousandth performance at the Opéra-Comique shortly after Scribe's death. In 1827 Scribe wrote the scenario for '' La Somnambule'', a ballet with music by Ferdinand Hérold, for the Paris Opéra. It was a landmark – the first time the Opéra had presented a ballet with a scenario by a leading dramatist. Until then the storyline and staging of a ballet had been left to the in-house ''chef de danse''. This was the precursor of the fusion of opera and ballet in the first French grand opera, given the following year – '' La Muette de Portici'', with music by Auber and libretto by Scribe and Delavigne. In 1828 Scribe collaborated with
Gioachino Rossini Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new standards ...
on '' Le Comte Ory'', an unusual undertaking as the words for about half the numbers had to be written to fit existing music, repurposed by Rossini from '' Il viaggio a Reims'', a ''
pièce d'occasion A pièce d'occasion () like the word ''pièce'' meaning preparing and ''d'occasion'' meaning for special occasion suggests pis a composition, dance or theatrical piece composed, often commissioned, for a festive occasion. Examples * ''The Dying ...
'' composed three years earlier.Osborne, p. 18 The opera was a success, and was seen in London within six months of the Paris premiere, and in New York in 1831.


1830s

In the 1830s Scribe's works were twice adapted by others for new operas that became well known. His scenario for ''La Somnambule'' was used by Felice Romani as the basis of Vincenzo Bellini's 1831 opera '' La sonnambula''; his libretto for Auber's ''Le Philtre'' (1831) was adapted by Romani for Gaetano Donizetti's ''
L'elisir d'amore ''L'elisir d'amore'' (''The Elixir of Love'', ) is a ' (opera buffa) in two acts by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto, after Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's ' (1831). The opera pre ...
'' (1832). The Opéra-Comique commissioned a grand opera, '' Robert le diable'', from Scribe, Delavigne and Giacomo Meyerbeer. For reasons of musical politics the work was premiered by the Paris Opéra, at the
Salle Le Peletier The Salle Le Peletier or Lepeletier (sometimes referred to as the Salle de la rue Le Peletier or the Opéra Le Peletier) was the home of the Paris Opera from 1821 until the building was destroyed by fire in 1873. The theatre was designed and con ...
in 1831, after extensive re-writing. Within three years it reached 100 performances on the stage of the Opéra, and by 1835 it had been seen at 77 houses in ten different countries. For the non-musical theatre, Scribe wrote ''Bertrand et Raton ou l'art de conspirer'' (The School for Politicians, 1830) a "serious" five-act comedy for the Comedie-Française. This began a series of historical or political comedies, which, as Pierre Larousse comments, have little to do with real politics and history, but which became the models of a new genre.Larousse, p. 424 The series continued with ''L'Ambitieux'' (1834), ''La Camaraderie'' (1836), ''Les Indépendants'' (1837), ''La Calomnie'' (1840) and '' Le Verre d'eau'' (1840), all comedies in five acts, developing a more or less original theme. In 1836 Scribe was elected to the Académie Française, and in 1839, at the age of 48 he married. His wife, whom he had known for several years, was the widow of a wine merchant. She worried about his tendency to overwork, and attempted, with only limited success, to get him to slow down. His working habits varied little throughout his life. He began work at five in the morning during the summer and at six in the winter, writing until noon. He spent the rest of the day planning new work, attending rehearsals of his plays or operas, and in the evening visiting friends or going to the theatre.Letellier, p. 10 During the 1830s Scribe introduced social questions into his plays, although never losing sight of his principal purpose, which was to entertain. By this point in his career he had honed his skills as a dramatist and developed what became known as the "
well-made play The well-made play (french: la pièce bien faite, pronounced ) is a dramatic genre from nineteenth-century theatre, developed by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. It is characterised by concise plotting, compelling narrative and a largely stan ...
" – ''la pièce bien faite'' – characterised by concise plotting, compelling narrative and a largely standardised structure, with little emphasis on characterisation and intellectual ideas. In the words of one literary critic: One of Scribe's key devices was the ''quiproquo'', in which two or more characters interpret a word, a situation or a person's identity in different ways, all the time assuming that their interpretations are the same. This important feature of Scribe's "well-made plays" was raised to its greatest heights by Georges Feydeau later in the 19th century. Scribe's earnings from his plays and librettos were considerable and he amassed a large fortune. He was a good businessman: commenting on a dispute over payment with
Léon Pillet Léon Pillet (6 December 1803 – 20 March 1868),Huebner 1992. was a 19th-century French journalist, civil servant, and director of the Paris Opera from 1840 to 1847. A political appointee, he was probably the least successful director of the Paris ...
, the director of the Opéra, in 1841, he said he wanted to be paid for his librettos "according to what they bring in, that is to say, a great deal. The present director only wants to pay for them according to what they are worth, that is to say, very little". He bought a mansion in the fashionable Rue Olivier-Saint-Georges and two country houses. He was unobtrusively generous to deserving causes; among his benefactions was a fund for impoverished musicians and theatre people, into which he paid 13,000 francs (roughly €125,000 in 2015 values) a year.


Later years

In Larousse's view the latter part of Scribe's career, from 1840 to 1861, was "just as full and as glorious as the first". Larousse singled out from the long list of Scribe's plays for the Théâtre Français: ''Une chaîne'' (1841), ''Le Puff'' (1848), ''Adrienne Lecouvreur'' (1819), ''Les Contes de la reine de Navarre'' (1850), ''Bataille de dames'' (1851) and ''La Czarine'' (1855). Of these, ''Bataille de dames'' – battle of the ladies – has been seen by literary critics including
Brander Matthews James Brander Matthews (February 21, 1852 – March 31, 1929) was an American academic, writer and literary critic. He was the first full-time professor of dramatic literature at Columbia University in New York and played a significant role in est ...
and Stephen Stanton as among the best and most characteristic of Scribe's plays.Stanton, Stephen
"Ibsen, Gilbert, and Scribe's 'Bataille de Dames'"
''Educational Theatre Journal'', March 1965, pp. 24–30
It combines a story of a young man's successful attempts to escape official attempts to arrest him on a political charge with the depiction of the love two women have for him. It combines action, romance and a happy, albeit bitter-sweet, ending. Henrik Ibsen thought highly of the work, and drew on it in his own early writing; Bernard Shaw also drew on it, in his '' Arms and the Man''. Of Scribe's later librettos for the Opéra or the Opéra-comique, Larousse listed as among the most notable: '' Les Diamants de la couronne'', ''
La Part du diable ''La part du diable'' ("The Devil's share" also known by the English title ''Carlo Broschi'') is an opéra comique by Daniel Auber to a libretto by Eugène Scribe, loosely based on an incident from the life of the singer Farinelli. It premi ...
'' and '' Haydée'' (with Auber, 1841, 1843 and 1847) and '' Le Prophète'' and '' L'Etoile du Nord'' (with Meyerbeer, 1849 and 1854). In 1855 Scribe had his only direct collaboration with Giuseppe Verdi. (The libretto for the latter's '' Un ballo in maschera'' (1859) was translated from Scribe's libretto for Auber's '' Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué'' (1833), but Scribe was not involved with the adaptation.) Scribe and Charles Duveyrier provided Verdi with the libretto for '' Les Vêpres siciliennes'', premiered at the Opéra in June. It was well received; Hector Berlioz judged it a perfect mixture of French and Italian sensibilities, but it did not become a core part of the Verdian operatic repertoire. Scribe was the subject of continual criticism from highbrow writers. Théophile Gautier and Théodore de Banville accused him of being "the ultimate in bourgeois art and philistinism, pleasing the masses and writing ''théâtre vide''" – empty plays. Gautier asked, "How is it that an author devoid of poetry, lyricism, style, philosophy, truth and naturalness could have become the most fashionable dramatic writer of an era?" Scribe's answer to the question was: Scribe elaborated on his views in a speech to the Académie Française: "I do not think the comic author should be a historian: that is not his mission. I do not believe that even in Molière himself you can recover the history of our country". In a 2012 study, David Conway writes of Scribe's historical operas: At the Académie, Scribe went on to give his views on the purpose of the theatre of his own time, maintaining that the public no longer went to the theatre to be instructed – as had been the theory in the 18th century – but to be diverted and entertained.Koon and Switzer, p. 26 Scribe never retired. He was working on the libretto for Meyerbeer's last opera, '' L'Africaine'', when he died suddenly of a stroke on 20 February 1861, in his carriage on the way home from a meeting of the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.


Works

:''See also
Well-made play The well-made play (french: la pièce bien faite, pronounced ) is a dramatic genre from nineteenth-century theatre, developed by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe. It is characterised by concise plotting, compelling narrative and a largely stan ...
, : Libretti by Eugène Scribe and : Plays by Eugène Scribe'' Estimates differ considerably of the number of stage works Scribe wrote or co-wrote. The published edition of his known works ran to 76 volumes, but it is inevitably incomplete, as he is known to have written pseudonymously and even anonymously. His total output of stage works is variously reckoned as between 300 and nearly 500. The known works include more than 120 librettos for 48 composers, collaborations in musical and non-musical theatre with more than 60 co-authors, and over 130 stage works written solo.Larousse, pp. 424–427 Among the many later playwrights drawing on Scribe's precepts for the well-made play were Alexandre Dumas ''fils'', Victorien Sardou and Georges Feydeau in France, W. S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde, Noël Coward and Alan Ayckbourn in Britain,Taylor, pp. 52, 54, 60 and 89–90; and Saunders, Graham
"The Persistence of the 'Well-Made Play' in British Theatre of the 1990s"
, University of Reading, 2008. Retrieved 5 June 2021
and Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller in the US.


Librettos

Among the best-known operas for which Scribe contributed to the libretto are: *1825: Boieldieu's '' La Dame blanche'' *1828: Auber's '' La Muette de Portici'' *1828: Rossini's '' Le Comte Ory'' *1830: Auber's '' Fra Diavolo'' *1831: Meyerbeer's '' Robert le diable'' *1831: Meyerbeer's '' Les Huguenots'' *1835: Halévy's '' La Juive'' *1843: Donizetti's '' Dom Sébastien'' *1849: Meyerbeer's '' Le Prophète'' *1855: Verdi's '' Les Vêpres siciliennes'' *1860: Offenbach's ''
Barkouf ''Barkouf'' is an opéra bouffe in three acts premiered in 1860 with music composed by Jacques Offenbach to a French libretto by Eugène Scribe and Henry Boisseaux, after Abbé Blanchet, the fourth of his ''Contes Orientaux'' entitled ''Barkou ...
*1865: Meyerbeer's '' L'Africaine'' (posthumous) Among the other composers with whom Scribe worked were Adolphe Adam, Michael Balfe,
Luigi Cherubini Luigi Cherubini ( ; ; 8 or 14 SeptemberWillis, in Sadie (Ed.), p. 833 1760 – 15 March 1842) was an Italian Classical and Romantic composer. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the gre ...
, Charles Gounod, Ferdinand Hérold and Ambroise Thomas.


Film adaptations

There have been at least 30 films based on works by Scribe, from the 1916 silent '' The Dumb Girl of Portici'', directed by
Phillips Smalley Wendell Phillips Smalley (August 7, 1865 – May 2, 1939) was an American silent film director and actor. Biography Born in Brooklyn, New York, he was the grandson of Wendell Phillips; he was the son of George Washburn Smalley, a war corres ...
and Lois Weber to '' A Glass of Water'' (1960), based on ''Le Verre d'eau''.


Notes, references and sources


Notes


References


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

* * *
Scribe's works at www.intratext.com
text, concordances and frequency list


''The Warner library.'' Editors: John W. Cunliffe, Ashley H. Thorndike. 1917
p. 13083ff {{DEFAULTSORT:Scribe, Eugene 1791 births 1861 deaths Writers from Paris 19th-century French dramatists and playwrights Members of the Académie Française French opera librettists French ballet librettists Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery