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Updated: May 12, 2025
The motive that inspired his life is suggested in his devout saying that music is an art that God has given us, in which the voices of all nations may unite their prayers in one harmonious rhythm. Halévy was a native of Paris, born May 27, 1799. He entered the Conservatory at the age of eleven years, where he soon attracted the particular attention of Cherubini.
To Gustave Flaubert the world was hideously ugly, and he wished it strangely and splendidly beautiful, and he detested it the more because of his impossible ideal. To Prosper Merimée the world was what it is, to be taken and made the best of, every man keeping himself carefully guarded. Like Merimée, M. Halévy is detached, but he is not disenchanted.
In these comedies the influence of the new school of Alexandre Dumas fils is plainly visible. And the inclination toward the strong, not to say violent, emotions which Dumas and Angier had imported into comedy is still more evident in Fanny Lear, the first five-act comedy which Meilhac and Halévy wrote together, and which was brought out in 1868.
But it is inconceivable that M. Halévy alone could have attained so high an elevation or have gained so full a comic force. Perhaps, however, M. Halévy deserves credit for the better technical construction of the later plays: merely in their mechanism the first three acts of Froufrou are marvellously skilful.
Sarah Bernhardt, Judic, Theo, Granier, and twenty others, and Mme. de Reske, Coquelin, Mounet-Sully, Paulus, etc., present, followed by concerts, the comedies of Dumas, of Meilhac, Halevy and Sardon. We had only one thing to mar it, one drama by Becque which seemed sad, but which subsequently had a great success at the Comedie-Francaise. In fact all Paris came. The enterprise was launched."
The Academy of Fine Arts elected the composer secretary in 1854, and in the exercise of his duties, which involved considerable literary composition, Halévy showed the same elegance of style and good taste which marked his musical writings.
Halévy answered his detractors by giving the world a delightful comic opera, "L'Éclair," which at once testified to the genuineness of his musical inspiration and the versatility of his powers, and was received by the public with even more pleasure than "La Juive." A somewhat singular fact occurred during the performance of this opera. One of the singers, every time he came to the passage,
The first very successful play which MM. Meilhac and Halévy wrote together was a book for M. Offenbach; and it was possibly the good fortune of this operetta which finally affirmed the partnership.
The "Punch" of Vienna said that Halévy made the brass play so loudly that the French horn was actually blown quite straight. Among the works produced at Berlin were "Nurmahal," in 1825; "Alcidor," the same year; and in 1829, "Agnes von Hohenstaufen." Various other new works were given from time to time, but none achieved more than a brief hearing.
We have seen such kinds of co-partnerships, for instance, in Beaumont and Fletcher; more recently in the beautiful French tales of Erckmann-Chatrian, and still later in the English novels of Besant and Rice. Some say it was a fortunate event for Meilhac; others assert that Halevy reaped a great profit by the union.
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