Charles Lecocq

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Charles

Alexandre Charles Lecocq (French pronunciation: [alɛksɑ̃dʁ ʃaʁl ləkɔk]; 3 June 1832 – 24 October 1918) was a French composer, known for his opérettes and opéras comiques. He became the most prominent successor to Jacques Offenbach in this sphere, and enjoyed considerable success in the 1870s and early 1880s, before the changing musical fashions of the late 19th century made his style of composition less popular. His few serious works include the opera Plutus (1886), which was not a success, and the ballet Le Cygne (1899). His only piece to survive in the regular modern operatic repertory is his 1872 opéra comique La Fille de Madame Angot (Mme Angot's Daughter). Others of his more than forty stage works receive occasional revivals. After study at the Paris Conservatoire, Lecocq shared the first prize with Georges Bizet in an operetta-writing contest organised in 1856 by Offenbach. Lecocq's next successful composition was an opéra-bouffe, Fleur-de-Thé (Tea-flower), twelve years later. His comic operas Les Cent Vierges (The Hundred Virgins, 1872), La Fille de Madame Angot (1872) and Giroflé-Girofla (1874) were all successes and established his international reputation. Critics remarked on the elegance of the music in Lecocq's best works. His other popular pieces in the…Citește mai mult

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Early years Lecocq was born in Paris, the son of a copyist at the Commercial Court of the Seine. His father was not highly paid, but supported a family of five children. As a boy Lecocq suffered from a hip condition that obliged him to use crutches throughout his life. His first musical instrument was the flageolet; a music teacher, discerning his talent, persuaded his parents to buy a piano. By the age of 16 Lecocq was giving private piano lessons which funded the lessons he himself was taking in harmony. He was admitted into the Paris Conservatoire in 1849, studying harmony under François Bazin, organ with François Benoist and composition with Fromental Halévy. Among his classmates were Georges Bizet and Camille Saint-Saëns; the latter became his lifelong friend. At the end of his second year he gained the second prize in counterpoint and was premier accessit in Benoist's organ class. He thought little of Halévy as a teacher, and was not inspired to pursue the top musical prize, the Prix de Rome. He would not, in the event, have been able to do so, because in 1854 he had to leave the Conservatoire prematurely to help support his parents,…Citește mai mult

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First success At the time when Lecocq left the Conservatoire, the genre of popular musical theatre known as opérette was becoming popular. It had been introduced by the composer Hervé and its principal exponent was Jacques Offenbach, who presented his works at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens from 1855. In 1856 he organised an open competition for aspiring composers. A jury of French composers and playwrights including Daniel Auber, Halévy, Ambroise Thomas, Charles Gounod and Eugène Scribe considered 78 entries; the five short-listed entrants were all asked to set a libretto, Le Docteur Miracle, written by Ludovic Halévy and Léon Battu. The joint winners were Bizet and Lecocq. Richard Traubner comments in his history of operetta that Bizet's version has survived better than Lecocq's, which is forgotten. Bizet became, and remained, a friend of Offenbach; Lecocq and Offenbach took a dislike to one another, and their rivalry in later years was not altogether friendly. Lecocq's setting of Le Docteur Miracle, was given eleven performances at Offenbach's theatre, but this early success was followed by eleven years of obscurity and routine work as a teacher, accompanist and répétiteur. Between 1859 and 1866, Lecocq wrote six one-act works, which were presented at the…Citește mai mult

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1870s The Franco-Prussian War in 1870–1871 temporarily interrupted Lecocq's rise, and he was gloomy about his prospects after it. In the longer term the war worked to his advantage, as it brought about the fall of the Second Empire, with which Offenbach had been closely identified in the popular mind, and in the aftermath of France's crushing defeat by Prussia, Offenbach's German birth made him unpopular in some quarters. While Offenbach struggled to re-establish himself in Parisian theatres, Lecocq began to occupy his place. After the outbreak of the war Lecocq moved temporarily to Brussels, where he premiered Les Cent Vierges (The Hundred Virgins, 1872), La Fille de Madame Angot (Madame Angot's Daughter, 1872) and Giroflé-Girofla (1874), all great successes there and then in Paris and elsewhere. La Fille de Madame Angot was most conspicuous of these successes. At the Parisian premiere in February 1873, Saint-Saëns said, "It's much more serious than you think; it's a success without parallel!" On the first night in Paris every number was encored. The work ran for 411 performances in Paris and was given in 103 cities and towns in France, and theatres in other countries: its London premiere was within three months of…Citește mai mult

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Later years At the turn of the decade Lecocq had a year's break from composition as a result of illness and domestic problems. He returned with the opéra comique Janot (1881), which was a failure. Lecocq had Meilhac and Halévy as his librettists, but all three collaborators were hampered by Koning's insistence on a plot revolving around his star singer, Jeanne Granier, in a breeches role as a wandering minstrel boy, a hackneyed device which audiences regarded as a cliché. The failure led to the break-up of Lecocq's association with Koning and the Renaissance. He transferred his allegiance to the Théâtre des Nouveautés where five of his next operas were staged. His choice caused some surprise, as the theatre, run by the actor-manager Jules Brasseur, had no reputation for opérette or opéra-bouffe, and was distinguished by the sometimes indelicate content of its productions. The most successful of Lecocq's works for the Nouveautés were the opéra bouffe Le Jour et la Nuit (Day and Night, 1881) and the opéra comique Le Cœur et la Main (The Heart and the Hand, 1882), both variations on his familiar theme of wedding nights disrupted by farcical complications. In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians,…Citește mai mult

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Works In a 2017 study, Laurence Senelick comments that whereas Offenbach's operas are frequently revived, Lecocq's are "the stuff of occasional antiquarian revivals" ... "sporadic productions of curiosity value". For the eight seasons from 2012 to 2020, the international Operabase archive records ten staged or planned productions of four pieces by Lecocq: six productions of La Fille de Madame Angot, two of the 1887 three-act opéra comique Ali-Baba and one each of Le Docteur Miracle and Le Petit Duc. For the same period, Operabase records more than five hundred productions of nearly forty different operas by Offenbach. Several writers have discussed why Lecocq's music is neglected. In 1911 an anonymous critic in The Observer wrote, "Lecocq succeeded in being a formidable rival to Offenbach. As a composer he was one of the happiest of melodists, but never attained the heights of fascinating vulgarity and bustling originality of his more famous contemporary". Lamb writes that much of Lecocq's music is characterised by a light touch, although "he could also adopt a more lyrical and elevated style than Offenbach". Traubner comments that Lecocq consciously sought to elevate comic opera from the satirical and zany opéra-bouffe of his predecessors to the supposedly loftier…Citește mai mult

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Sources Almeida, Antonio de (1976). Offenbach's songs from the great operettas. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-23341-3. Bruyas, Florian (1974). Histoire de l'opérette en France, 1855–1965 (in French). Lyon: Emanuel Vitte. OCLC 1217747. Gammond, Peter (1980). Offenbach. London: Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-7119-0257-2. Grout, Donald Jay; Hermine Weigel Williams (2003). A Short History of Opera. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-11958-0. Harding, James (1980). Jacques Offenbach: A Biography. London: John Calder. ISBN 978-0-7145-3835-8. Letellier, Robert (2015). Operetta: A Sourcebook. Volume I. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4438-6690-3. Senelick, Laurence (2017). Jacques Offenbach and the Making of Modern Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-87180-8. Traubner, Richard (2016). Operetta: A Theatrical History. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-13892-6.