Eugène Scribe
He is known for writing "well-made plays" ("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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
[2] 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 he set his sights on a theatrical career.
[3] His first piece, a one-act vaudeville[n 1] Le Prétendu par hasard, was produced anonymously at the Théâtre des Variétés in January 1810 and was a failure.
[6] 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.
[5] 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, and Charles Moreau.
[21] 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.
He was a good businessman: commenting on a dispute over payment with Léon Pillet, 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.
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.
Of these, Bataille de dames – battle of the ladies – has been seen by literary critics including Brander Matthews and Stephen Stanton as among the best and most characteristic of Scribe's plays.
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.
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.
He was working on the libretto for Meyerbeer's last opera, L'Africaine,[n 7] 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.
[41] 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,[42] W. S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde, Noël Coward and Alan Ayckbourn in Britain,[43] and Lillian Hellman and Arthur Miller in the US.
Among the other composers with whom Scribe worked were Adolphe Adam, Michael Balfe, Luigi Cherubini, Charles Gounod, Ferdinand Hérold and Ambroise Thomas.
