Ernest Reyer, about 1848

Statue of Ernest Reyer at Palais Longchamp in Marseille (France).

Ernest Reyer, the adopted name of Louis Étienne Ernest Rey, was a French opera composer and music critic (December 1, 1823 – January 15, 1909).

Biography[link]

Ernest Reyer was born in Marseilles. His father, a notary, did not want his son to take up a career in music. However, he did not actively block his son's ambitions and allowed him to attend classes at the Conservatoire from age six to sixteen. In 1839, when he was 16 years old, Ernest traveled to north Africa to work under his brother-in-law, head of accounting for the Treasury Department in Algeria. The job was not a good fit with Reyer's nonchalant and undisciplined temperament. From administrative documents, it is apparent that Reyer wrote innumerable youthful essays and stories, and original dance pieces. Some of his early compositions achieved local notoriety and received favorable comments in the Algerian press, including a Mass performed at the cathedral that was performed for the arrival of the Duke of Aumale in 1847.

Reyer returned to Paris during the events 1848. During this period, he was introduced to various eminent artists, including Gustave Flaubert and Théophile Gautier. Southern France and Provence held its allure, and Reyer returned there to socialize with local people with whom he loved to play dominoes while smoking a pipe. He said that his pipe was his best source of inspiration.

His aunt, Louise Farrenc, professor of piano at the Conservatoire and a talented composer in her own right, directed Reyer's early musical studies. In 1850, he composed a symphonic ode with choirs to words by Gautier; this was conducted by Sélam at the Théatre Italien. Four years later, in 1854, he composed music for an opera in one act, Maître Wolfram ("Master Wolfram"), whose libretto was by Joseph Méry. Hearing a performance of this work at the Opéra Comique, Berlioz recognized Reyer's talent. He said that Reyer's output had "nothing in common with the somewhat affected, somewhat dilapidated approach the Paris muse [...]. His melodies are natural [...]. There's heart and imagination there."

Gradually, some fame came Reyer's way. In 1857, the critic Charles Monselet wrote: "Is this a musician who writes, or a writer who makes music? I do not know, but I am hopeful that this spirited boy will make his way to singing and writing." Admittedly, Reyer was not (yet) unanimously praised and some critics pointed-out that his orchestration had not achieved a level of musical genius.

The following year he composed a ballet, Sacountalâ, with a story, once again, by Gautier. The ballet was given twenty-four performances through to 1860. (Sacountalâ is also the title of a famous overture by Karl Goldmark and of an opera by Franco Alfano.)

In 1861, Reyer composed an opéra-comique in three acts and six scenes, La statue ("The Statue"), whose plot was inspired by "One Thousand and One Nights" (also knowns as: "Arabian Nights") with a libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier. It was premiered in Théâtre Lyrique in Paris on April 11, 1861.^[1] In less than two years, La statue achieved sixty performances, an impressive figure for the period.

Reyer's work was finally universally recognized in 1862, and the composer from Marseilles became a chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The same year, he composed Érostrate, an opera in two acts, which was played in August 1862 in Baden-Baden, under the auspices of great families in Europe, which earned him the distinction of receiving the Red Eagle from the hands of the Queen of Prussia.

Little by little, however, his reputation began to decline. The same Érostate failed completely in Paris and was staged for only three performances, which deprived the work of a possible production at the Opéra.

The best-known of his five operas is Sigurd (1884); it was quite popular in France during its initial production there (it had its premiere in Brussels at the Théâtre de La Monnaie in January 1884), and is sometimes (although rarely) revived. Sigurd is based on the Scandinavian legends of the Edda Volsunga saga (Nibelungenlied), the same source which Richard Wagner drew upon for the libretto for his Ring cycle. The music of Sigurd, however, is quite unlike the music of Wagner. While Reyer admired Wagner, he developed his music more along the lines of his mentor, Hector Berlioz. Listening to Sigurd, one cannot help but hear echoes of Les Troyens or Benvenuto Cellini, embued with the same heroic musical posture.

Reyer's last opera was Salammbô (1890), based on the novel by Gustave Flaubert, which achieved 46 performances from May to December 1892. The work had been composed several years earlier but had been met with initial resistance by administrators, as had Sigurd. It was first performed at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels in 1890, and at the Théâtre des Arts in Rouen.

Unable to live on the proceeds from his operas, Reyer succeeded Berlioz as music critic at the Journal des débats. He also worked as the librarian at the Académie de musique.

Other compositions by Reyer include a symphonic ode entitled Le sélam for soprano, tenor, baritone, chorus & orchestra ...

Reyer died in Le Lavandou, in the south of France, ~80 km east of Marseilles.

Selected compositions[link]

• Chœur des buveurs et chœurs des assiégés, ca. 1848.
• Le sélam, 1850.
• Maître Wolfram, 1-act Opéra Comique, 1854.
• Sacountalâ, ballet 1858.
• Chant des paysans (from Les Volontaires de 1814 by V. Séjour), 1861.
• La statue, 1861.
• Erostrate, 1862.
• L'hymne du Rhin, words by Méry, 1865.
• La Madeleine au désert, poems by Ed. Blau, 1874.
• Marche tzigane.
• Recueil de mélodies et de fragments d'opéras.
• Sigurd, 1884.
• Salammbô, 1890.
• Tristesse, poems by Ed. Blau, 1884.
• L'homme, poems by G. Boyer, 1892.
• Trois sonnets, poems by C. du Locle.

Selected writings in French[link]

• Notes de musiques, Charpentier, 1875.
• Notice sur Félicien David, Académie des Beaux-Arts, 17 November 1877.
• Berlioz, Revue des Revues, 1 January 1894.
• Quarante ans de musique (1857-1899), posthumus publication with préface and notes by Henriot, Calmann-Lévy, 1910, in-8°.

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Jullien, Adolphe (1909). Ernest Reyer : biographie critique. Paris: H. Laurens. 
• Huebner, Steven (2006). [http://books.google.com/books?id=KSQGZOTQKmwC&pg=PA169&dq=%22Ernest+Reyer+as+Berliozian%22. Oxford Univ. Press, US. pp. 169–177. ISBN 978-0-19-518954-4. 
• G. Kordes, Ernest Reyer : progressiste ou conservateur ? Son esthétique de l'opéra réalisée dans Sigurd : Figures d'époque (Ernest Reyer : progressist or conservative? His aesthetics of opera in Sigurd : Figures of the epoch), Bull. de la société Th.-Gautier, n°15, 1993.
• Henri de Curzon, « Ernest Reyer, sa vie et ses œuvres », Revue de musicologie, 1924.
• C. E. Curinier, Dictionnaire national des contemporains, 1899
• Charles Monselet, La Lorgnette littéraire : dictionnaire des grands et des petits auteurs de mon temps, éd. Auguste Poulet-Malassis and Eugène de Broise, 1857, p. 188.

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Ernest Reyer

• Free scores by Ernest Reyer at the International Music Score Library Project

Régine Crespin (23 February 1927 – 5 July 2007) was a French singer who had a major international career in opera and on the concert stage between 1950 and 1989. She started her career singing roles in the dramatic soprano and spinto soprano repertoire, drawing particular acclaim singing Wagner and Strauss heroines. She went on to sing a wider repertoire that embraced Italian, French, German, Russian, and English opera from a variety of musical periods. In the early 1970s Crespin began experiencing vocal difficulties for the first time and ultimately began performing roles from the mezzo-soprano repertoire. Throughout her career she was widely admired for the elegance, warmth and subtlety of her singing, especially in the French and German operatic repertories.

Crespin began her career in France, earning her first critical successes in the French provinces during the early 1950s and then becoming a fixture at the Opéra National de Paris in the mid 1950s. Her international career was launched in 1958 with a critically acclaimed performance of Kundry in Richard Wagner's Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival. She soon appeared at most of the major opera houses in the United States and Europe and made a number of appearances in South America as well. She had a long and fruitful association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, making over 125 appearances at that house between 1962 and 1987. Crespin retired from the stage in 1989, after which she taught singing for many years at her alma mater, the Conservatoire de Paris, and gave numerous acclaimed master classes at conservatories and universities internationally.

In recognition of Crespin's artistry as a singer, the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition, which had been restricted to pianists and violinists, has been expanded in 2011 to include singers and has been renamed the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition.^[1]

Early life and education: 1927-1950[link]

Crespin was born in Marseille in 1927. She moved to Nîmes with her family at the age of five^[2] and her parents opened a large shoe store in that city which they ran for many years. Crespin's childhood was not an easy one, being affected both by growing up during World War II and her mother's alcoholism.^[3] She initially intended to be a pharmacist^[2] but was prevented in pursuing this path after failing to pass her Baccalauréat at the age of 16.^[4] Up to this point her father had not allowed her to study singing. However, as her career path was limited by the exam results he finally allowed her to start taking lessons for purely pragmatic reasons.^[3] She went on to win first prize in a singing competition a few years later, and, at the age of nineteen, she went to Paris to study at the Conservatoire de Paris in the classes of Suzanne Cesbon-Viseur and Georges Jouatte.^[5] Four years later, in 1950, she was awarded first prize in the school's onstage competitions for opera and opéra comique and second prize in the school's singing competition. Traditionally past winners of Conservatoire's competitions were offered performance contracts with the Opéra National de Paris, but Crespin was for some unknown reason not offered one. This created a somewhat tenuous relationship relationship between Crespin and her country's musical establishment which extended into the early portion of her career.^[2]