Albert Guillaume Florent Vanloo (Brussels, 10 September 1846 – 4 March 1920, Paris) was a Belgian librettist and playwright. In his first two decades writing for the stage he usually co-wrote librettos and play scripts with Eugène Leterrier. After Leterrier's death in 1888 Vanloo worked with writers including William Busnach, Henri Chivot and Georges Duval.
Vanloo wrote or co-wrote librettos for sixteen composers between 1868 and 1901, including Jacques Offenbach, Emmanuel Chabrier and André Messager, but his most enduring and fecund partnership was with Charles Lecocq, for whom he wrote librettos for nine operas between 1874 and 1900.
Life and career
editVanloo was the son of a prosperous manufacturer of furniture, based in Paris.[1] Vanloo was brought up there, and was an outstanding student at the Lycée Charlemagne, before going on to law school, which he found boring.[2][3] Attracted to the theatre, he began writing plays and libretti, with Eugène Leterrier who remained his principal collaborator until dying in 1888 at the age of 41. Their first collaboration was a one-act vaudeville, Un mariage aux petites affiches (roughly, Marriage through Classifed Ads), in 1867.[1] Their first opéra bouffe was Le Petit Poucet, with music by Laurent de Rillé, premiered at the Théâtre de l'Athénée in October 1868.[4] They followed this with librettos for an opéra comique, Madeleine, with music by Henri-Hippolyte Potier; a one-act "opérette militaire", La nuit du 15 octobre, music by Georges Jacobi, presented at the Bouffes-Parisiens in 1869;[5] and Nabucho, an opéra bouffe, music by Auguste de Villebichot, at the Folies-nouvelles in 1871.[6][n 1]
Leterrier and Vanloo's first great success was in 1874, with the opéra bouffe Giroflé-Girofla with music by Charles Lecocq. It was first presented at the Théâtre des Fantaisies Parisiennes, Brussels, and was given in London and Paris later the same year, and subsequently in theatres throughout Europe, in the Americas and Australia.[7][8] In the same year came their only work specially written for a London theatre: The Demon Bride, Or A Legend of a Lucifer Match, with music by Jacobi; Leterrier and Vanloo's text was translated by H. J. Byron. Jacobi's music was praised, but the libretto was criticised for being impossibly complicated and not conspicuously original in its plot.[9]
In 1875 Vanloo and Leterrier had their first collaboration with Jacques Offenbach, in the opéra féerie Le voyage dans la lune together with a co-librettist, Arnold Mortier. It ran at the Théâtre de la Gaîté for 185 performances.[10]
In addition to his theatre work, Vanloo practised journalism. He contributed to the Gazette de Paris, and then to Le Figaro, where he deputised for Arnold Mortier in the column "Soirées du monsieur de l'Orchestre", and then to finally to La Liberté, in which he wrote a series of articles in 1911–1913 describing the musical theatre of the 1860s to the 1890s. These articles were later collected and published as a book under the title Sur le Plateau – Souvenirs d'un Librettiste, issued in 1914 with a preface by Lecocq.[11]
Libretti
edit
For Paul Lacôme
For Charles Lecocq
For André Messager
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For other composers
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Between librettos, Vanloo and Leterrier collaborated on non-musical comedies: Les maníaques (1874), Papa (1879) and Le huis clos (1883).[2][12]
Notes, references and sources
editNotes
editReferences
edit- ^ a b c "Albert Vanloo", Encyclopédie de l'art lyrique français, Association l'Art Lyrique Français. Retrieved 4 January 2019
- ^ a b "Albert Vanloo", Le Figaro, 5 March 1920, p. 3
- ^ a b Smith, Christopher. 2002 "Vanloo, Albert", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press. Retrieved 4 January 2019 (subscription required)
- ^ "Le Petit Poucet", Le XIXe siècle: journal quotidien politique et littéraire, 29 October 1885, p. 4
- ^ "La nuit du 15 octobre", Bibliothèque nationale de France. Retrieved 4 January 2019
- ^ "Nabucho", Internet Archive. Retrieved 4 January 2019
- ^ Loewenberg, p. 533
- ^ Gänzl and Lamb, p. 342
- ^ "London Theatres", The Era, 13 September 1874, p. 11; and "Theatres", The Graphic, 12 September 1874, p. 251
- ^ Noël and Stoullig (1876), p. 314 and (1877), p. 342
- ^ Vanloo, pp. vii–xi
- ^ "The Drama in Paris", The Era, 20 December 1874, p. 10
Sources
edit- Gänzl, Kurt; Andrew Lamb (1988). Gänzl's Book of the Musical Theatre. London: The Bodley Head. OCLC 966051934.
- Loewenberg, Alfred (1943). Annals of Opera. Cambridge: Heffer. OCLC 253716011.
- Noël, Édouard; Edmond Stoullig (1876). Les annales du théatre et de la musique, 1875. Paris: Charpentier. OCLC 1024149992.
- Noël, Édouard; Edmond Stoullig (1877). Les annales du théatre et de la musique, 1876. Paris: Charpentier. OCLC 1024149992.
- Vanloo, Albert (1914). Sur le Plateau – Souvenirs d'un Librettiste. Paris: Ollendorf. OCLC 774547441.
External links
edit- List of works by Vanloo at the Index to Opera and Ballet Sources Online