Scribe, Augustin Eugène
Scribe, Augustin Eugène
(ōgüstăN` özhĕn` skrēb), 1791–1861, French dramatist and librettist. He began his prolific and highly successful writing career with vaudeville sketches. One of the first playwrights to mirror bourgeois morality and life, he infused 19th-century French opera and drama with liberal political and religious ideas. Among the best of his comedies, which are notable for their well-structured plots, is Bataille de Dames (1851). His historical drama Adrienne Lecouvreur (1849) was later adapted as an opera. Scribe wrote librettos for about 60 operas by such composers as AuberAuber, Daniel-François-Esprit, 1782–1871, French operatic composer. His greatest successes resulted from his collaboration with the librettist Scribe. Their first success together was Le Maçon
..... Click the link for more information. , MeyerbeerMeyerbeer, Giacomo
, 1791–1864, German operatic composer. He traveled in Italy and experimented in various styles of composition, but his real success came only with his spectacular French grand operas—Robert le Diable (1831) and his masterpiece,
..... Click the link for more information. , HalévyHalévy, Jacques François Fromental Élie
, 1799–1862, French operatic composer. He studied with Cherubini at the Paris Conservatory, where he became a professor in 1827.
..... Click the link for more information. , BelliniBellini, Vincenzo
, 1801–35, Italian opera composer. He acquired his musical training from his grandfather and father, and began composing religious and secular music in his childhood. His first opera, Adelson e Salvini, was successfully performed in 1825.
..... Click the link for more information. , and VerdiVerdi, Giuseppe
, 1813–1901, foremost Italian composer of opera, b. Le Roncole. Verdi, the son of an innkeeper, showed a precocious talent for the organ but was refused entrance to the Milan Conservatory as having been inadequately trained.
..... Click the link for more information. .
Scribe, Augustin Eugène
Born Dec. 25, 1791, in Paris; died there Feb. 21, 1861. French playwright. Member of the Académie Française (1834).
Scribe’s plays, which number approximately 150, made up the basic comedic repertoire of the 19th-century French theater. His witty and mockingly humorous vaudevilles and comedies are characterized by artfully constructed plots and lively dialogue. Praising common sense, practicality, and bourgeois virtues, they appealed to bourgeois audiences, who were touched by the “office heroism and the poetry of the shop” and who recognized “themselves and their ideals in Scribe’s heroes” (A. I. Herzen, Sobr. soch, vol. 5, 1955, p. 34). The plays Le Manage d’argent (1827), Le Mariage de raison (1828), and Une Chaî ne (1841) are typical examples. Despite Scribe’s conservative social views, his best plays are topical and bitingly satirical, for example, La Camaraderie ou la courte-échelle (1837). Some plays, for example, Le Verre d’eau (1840) and Adrienne Lecouvreur (1849), are loosely based on historical events.
Scribe wrote most of his plays in collaboration with other playwrights, including G. Delavigne, E. Legouvé, and E. Mazères. He wrote librettos for operas by G. Meyerbeer, D. F. E. Auber, J. Halévy, and other composers. He also wrote prose works. Approximately 130 of Scribe’s plays and approximately 20 of his opera librettos have been translated into Russian. Prominent Russian and Soviet actors have performed in Scribe’s plays, which have been well known in Russia since the 1820’s.
WORKS
Oeuvres complètes [vols. 1–76). Paris, 1874–85.In Russian translation:
P’esy. Moscow, 1960.
REFERENCES
Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 2. Moscow, 1956.Istoriia zapadnoevropeiskogo teatra, vol. 3. Moscow, 1963.
Lunacharskii, A. V.“Skrib i skribizm.” Sobr. soch., vol. 6. Moscow, 1965.
Arvin, N. C. E. Scribe and the French Theatre, 1815–1860. Cambridge [1968].
Cardwell, W. D. The Dramaturgy of E. Scribe (dissertation). New Haven, Conn., 1971.
G. S. AVESSALOMOVA