Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny

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Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny (* Fauquembergues, near Saint-Omer, October 17, 1729 - † Paris, January 14, 1817) was a French composer, a contemporary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and a member of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts (1813).

He is considered alongside André Ernest Modeste Grétry and François-André Danican to have been the founder of a new musical genre, the French comic opera (opéra comique), laying a path for other French composers such as François-Adrien Boïeldieu, Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, Charles Gounod, Georges Bizet, and Jules Massenet in this genre.

Paul Dukas is quoted as saying “Of all the composers of our country, he may be the first who had the gift of true, human emotion, of communicative expression and of fair feeling”.

[edit] Biography

In Fauquembergues, in the former Artois region of France (now Pas-de-Calais), Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny was born on October 17, 1729, four months before the marriage of his parents, Marie-Antoinette Dufresne and Nicolas Monsigny.

He was educated at the Collége des Jésuites Wallons in Saint-Omer. It was here that he first discovered his apitude for music.

As the eldest child, in 1749, a few months after his father's death, he left for Paris with only a few coins in his pocket, a violin and a recommandation letter, in an attempt to further his musical career and provide for his siblings. He entered into the service of a 'Mr. de Saint-Julien, in the bureau of the Comptabilité du Clergé de France. In 1752, after watching a performance of La serva padrona by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi at the National Opera of Paris, he decided upon his true vocation. He then became Gianotti's student, and a counter-bassist at the Paris Opéra.

Secretly, with a booklet of La Ribardière, he writes Les Aveux indiscrets, his first comical opera, played at the theater of Saint-Germain first in February 1759. This works encounters a warm welcome which encourages him into composing a second opera, in two acts, on a libretto by Pierre-René Lemmonier. Le Maître en droit, the following year, got the same ovations. Michel-Jean Sedaine, a well-liked librettist, proposes to Monsigny to collaborate with him, following Le Cadi dupé's success. Their common production is revealed excellent : On ne s'avise jamais de tout, Le Roi et le fermier, Rose et Colas reach the top. On April 15, 1766, at the Académie royale de Musique his epic ballet in three acts Aline, reine de Golconde does not reach the awaited success. The critics will be harsher two years later, with L'Île sonnante. The music, it is true, preserves its usual grace of Monsigny's touch. However, Charles Collé's booklet happens to be unadapted and justifies its little success.

It is during this same year of 1768 that the composer buys the charge of Head Waiter at the service of the Duke d'Orleans. This patronal environment favors a little more his inspiration. Michel-Jean Sedaine submits his booklet Le Déserteur for which he composes the score that will let him know his best hours of glory. Yet Le Faucon created in 1771 is a failure. On August the 17th, 1775, La Belle Arsène causes controversed critics.

In 1777, following the success of Félix ou l'Enfant trouvé, Monsigny stops composing. At the beginning of the year 1784 he gets married to Amélie de Villemagne, with whom he will live peacefully until the troubles of 1789. The French Revolution and the Terror deprives them of all their material existence. The musician and his family sink into deep misery and in oblivion for a few years. Hearing of the composer's state of poverty, the members of the Comical Opera succeed into giving him a pension of 2.400 pounds, in order to prove their gratitude to one of the founders of their theater.

Then, the years of adversity come to an end and Monsigny reaches once again his deserved success. He becomes inspector of teaching at the Conservatoire de Musique de Paris, then in 1804, he receives the title of Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. In 1813 he succeeds Grétry at the Institute. Sadly, total blindness afflicts his last years.

Monsigny dies at Paris on January 14th of the year 1817 leaving the souvenir of a modest man, courteous "with elegant and simple maners" full of a sensibility which is visible in his twelve main works.

[edit] Works

• Les Aveux indiscrets (1759)
• Le Maître en droit (1760)
• On ne s'avise jamais de tout (1761)
• Le Cadi dupé (1761)
• Le Roi et le fermier (1762)
• Le Nouveau monde (1763)
• Rose et Colas (1764)
• Aline, reine de Golconde (1766)
• Philémon et Baucis (1767)
• L'Île sonnante (1768)
• Le Déserteur (1769)
• Le Faucon (1772)
• La Belle Arsène (1773)
• Félix ou l'Enfant trouvé (1777)

[edit] Bibliography

• P.J.B. Nougaret: De l’art du théâtre (Paris, 1769)
• A.E.M. Grétry: Mémoires, ou Essais sur la musique (Paris, 1789, 2/1797)
• A. Pougin: Monsigny et son temps (Paris, 1908)
• D. Heartz: ‘The Beginnings of Operatic Romance: Rousseau, Sedaine, and Monsigny’, Eighteenth Century Studies, xv (1981–2), 149–78
• B.A. Brown: Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford, 1991)
• K. Pendle: ‘L'opéra-comique à Paris de 1762 à 1789’, L’opéra-comique en France au XVIIIe siècle, ed. P. Vendrix (Liège,1992), 79–178
• R. Legrand: ‘L'opéra comique de Sedaine et Monsigny’, Michel Sedaine (1719–1797): Theatre, Opera and Art, ed. D. Charlton and M. Ledbury (Aldershot, forthcoming)