Scan 177
The New Grove Dictionary Of Music And Musicians 5 Ed. 2nd, 1904
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1qualified in this by the age of 21. In 1774 he went to Versailles, where a commission had been obtained for him as a sub-lieutenant in the personal guard of the Count of Artois, later Charles X. In Paris Dalayrac encountered influential musicians and musical amateurs such as the Baron de Bésenval and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, he later received composition lessons from Honoré Langlè. Grétry reported in his Mémores, ou Essais sur la musique that Dalayrac was admitted to his study, but was not a formal pupil
3Dalayrac's earliest compositions were violin duos and string trios and quartets, some of which are lost. Published under an Italian pseudonym, the quartets were very popular; Pixérécourt related how the composer's identity was found out. Surviving sets of quartets start with op.4; the earliest known publication date for any Dalayrac work is 1777 when the Gazette de France of 28 November announced 'Six [unidentified] quatuors concertants'. Pixérécourt wrote that Dalayrac was a member of the masonic Lodge 'Neuf-Socurs' and that in 1778 he composed music both for Voltaire's masonic reception and for that of Franklin at Mme Helvétius's. This has been neither substantiated nor disproved.
5In 1781 Bésenval asked Dalayrac to set two stage works to music for private performance Le petit souper and Le chevalier a la mode. These were well received, and the following year, under the protection of Marie-Antoinette, L'éclipse totale was given at the Comédie-Italienne. Before the Revolution Dalayrac's major successes were Nina, ou La folle par amour (1786), Azémua, ou Le nouveau Robinson (1786) and Les deux petits Savoyards (1789). Like most of the remainder, these were printed in full score. Beethoven possessed a copy of Les deux petits Savoyards. Nina is important both for the universal popularity of the romance, 'Quand le bien-aimé reviendra' (mentioned in Berlioz's Mémores), and for its concentration on the sentimental story, comic elements being excluded altogether. It may have been the first opéra comique of this type.
7The tale concerns a girl, Nina, who becomes unbalanced when her father insists on separation from her lover. Germeuil Believing Germeuil to be dead, Nina, dressed in white, goes daily to the same place, to await his return. When he does return he is welcomed as a son by Nina's distraught father. The crisis of the story involves Nina's dramatic recovery. As in Act 3 of Tristan und Isolde, a shepherd's tune (oboe solo) is used to distract the sick protagonist. The simple emotionalism of the story was still gratifying audiences in the 1820s in a ballet version at the Paris Opéra, although the subject matter had originally been considered so innovatory that the piece was tried out in private (E. J. Dent stated that the source of the libretto was French; but a girl crazed through thwarted love appears, also wearing white, as Maria of Moulins in Sterne's influential masterpieces, Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey.)
9From about 1790, Dalayrac was obliged to spell his name in non-aristocratic fashion (rather than D'Alayrac). In 1792 he married the actress Gilberte Sallarde, who later, during the Directory and Consulate, presided over a lively salon. In the difficult days of 1793-5 Dalayrac's purely musical popularity seems to have guided him safely through. He wrote one or two Republican songs, but his most usual contribution by far was the indirect one of adapting popular operatic tunes to Republican words; his 'Veillons au salut de l'empire' (originally from Renaud d'Ast, 1787) was a favourite revolutionary melody. In 1795 he was a co-signatory with the foremost Parisian composers in a prospectus advertising the sale of Republican music. Yet his success set him somewhat apart from the 'Conservatoire school' (Méhul, Cherubini, Gossec etc) and he could afford not to join the Conservatoire staff.
11In the 1790s Dalayrac's operas were influenced by the gothic taste for castle prisons, the dark and the frightful. Camille (1791) portrays a wise unjustly imprisoned subject (set also by Paer, who also composed a successful Nina) may have inspired Lewis's novel The Monk (1795). Dalayrac's Léon, ou Le château de Monténèro (1798) is based on Mrs Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, the Magasin encyclopédique expressed surprise at seeing a plot more fit for melodrama on the stage of the Salle Favart from the outset. Dalayrac's work had wide appeal, and for good musical and dramatic reasons. Even England's second Viscount Palmerston was captivated: 'Aug 6th [1791]: Saw a French opera called Raoul de Crequi, extremely interesting and admirably acted'.
13In 1798 Dalayrac was awarded membership of the Swedish Royal Academy (Pixérécourt reproduced the awarding letter), which indicates something of his European reputation. In 1804 he was made one of the first members of the Légion d'honneur. He continued composing successfully; in 1809 he put particular effort into Le poète et le musicien, which was to have been given on Napoleon's coronation anniversary (4 December), but he caught a fever and died before the destined day. The work was first mounted in 1811.
15Although Dalayrac never left France, his operas were very popular abroad, especially in Germany, Scandinavia and Russia, a few were adapted in England. Records of their performances in Vienna show that there, as in Paris, his work was accepted as the logical continuation of Grétry's. Beethoven played in the orchestra for Nina, Azémua and Les deux petits Savoyards in Bonn. Weber wrote a critique of Léhéman (played in Germany as Macdonald) and mounted Adolphe et Clara and Les deux petits Savoyards in Prague in 1814.
17In Paris Dalayrac was often admired as well as liked by his peers. When in 1798 the Courrier des spectacles criticized Léon for 'superflues', H M Berton sprang to its defence in a public letter. 'One of the things which most struck the actors and orchestra of the Théâtre Favart … was that the music does not at all resemble Dalayrac's other productions'. Pixérécourt stressed the composer's modest, friendly nature and his restrained style of living. That Dalayrac never received a government annuity was ascribed by Pixérécourt to his retiring disposition. A marble bust of the composer, funded by subscription, was placed in the foyer of the Opéra-Comique in 1810.
192 WORKS. To be accorded a biography by the famous Pixérécourt was not, in Dalayrac's case, the mere result of personal friendship. Dalayrac possessed considerable skill not just in selecting suitable librettos, but in successfully determining the delicate balance between music and words that opéra comique requires. He was ready to cast aside the most painstakingly written music if it was seen to hold up the action inappropriately, and was nicknamed 'Le musicien poète'. He showed a marked fondness for the operatic ensemble; his often contain entries, exits, conversations and counter-conversations,
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