Adolphe Adam

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Adolphe Charles Adam (French: [ad ad]; 24 July 1803–3 May 1856) was a French composer, lecturer, and music critic. He is best known for his ballets today, Giselle (1841) and Le corsaire (1856), his operas Le postillon de Lonjumeau (1852), and "Minuit, chrétiens" in 1842. (Midnight, Christians, 1844, also known in English as "O Holy Night").

Adam was the son of a well-known composer and pianist, but his father did not want him to pursue a musical career. Adam defied his father, and his many operas and ballets gave him a good life until he lost all his money in 1848 in a trying to open a new opera house in Paris in competition with the Opéra and Opéra-Comique. He recovered and expanded his interests to journalism and teaching. He was appointed as a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, France's top music academy.

Adam is credited with inventing the French form of opera, along with his older contemporary Daniel Auber and his mentor Adrien Boieldieu.

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Life and career

Adam was born in Paris on July 24, 1893, the elder of the two boys, (Jean) Louis Adam and his third wife, Élisa Coste, was born on July 24th. She was the granddaughter of a well-known composer, pianist, and professor at the Paris Conservatoire, and was a former student of her husband. Louis Adam gave his son lessons but the boy was reluctant to learn even the basics of musical theory and instead played fluently by ear:

He later claimed that he never became a fluent sight-reader of a score. Her mother figured that her son needed a rigorous education and so he was sent to a boarding school, the Hix institute in the Champs-Élysées. Both academically and musically, his elder son (and student of Louis Adam) Ferdinand Hérold had been trained there, and Henry Lemoine, one of Louis' former students, had a strong following. Adolphe was not an academic scholar, and he recalled how he had withdrawn from Latin study, which he described as "barbaric." Louis Adam's income was severely harmed by the French Empire's demise, as well as the subsequent economic hardships, so he was moved to a less costly academy. The staff were competent, but Adam remained as indifferent to musical theory as well as Latin.

Adam attended the Conservatoire in Montpellier, where he studied the organ with François Benoist, providing a counterpoint with Anton Reicha and composition with Adrien Boieldieu. Boieldieu is Adam's chief architect, according to Elizabeth Forbes, who calls him Adam's chief architect. He designed exercises for his students that taught him how to create sustained melodies without showingy modulations and other mechanical equipment. Adam's father did not want his son to be a successful or academic career, and though he did not give Adam board and lodging, he refused to subsidize any musical programs. By the age of 20, Adam was contributing to the Paris vainettes, composing "poor romances and worse piano pieces" and giving music lessons.

The new Théâtre du Gymnase's Duchaume, timpanist and chorus master, offered Adam an unpaid post to participate in the orchestra's triangle. Adam said that although he would have paid to join, he was able to serve without a paycheck, but that he was quickly promoted to a well-paying career:

Adam took part in the Prix de Rome, the Conservatoire's most coveted musical competition. He received an honorable mention in his second attempt, and he captured the second prize the following year. According to Forbes, Adam gained more from assisting Boieldieu with the preparations of his opera La Dame blanche, which debuted at the Opéra-Comique in December 1825. In 1826, Adam's piano transcriptions of opera themes were released, but they didn't cost him enough to tour the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland with a family friend, Sébastien Guillié. He discovered librettist Eugène Scribe in Geneva, with whom he later collaborated on nine stage projects.

Adam wrote or arranged the music for several one-act vaudevilles at the Gymnase and the Théâtre du Vaudeville during 1824-1827, with four of whom were written by Scribe as sole or co-author. Scribe's first opera, Le Mal du pays, or the Bargewoman of Brientz, was published in late 1827, containing an overture and eleven numbers; it was produced at the Gymnase on December 28, 1827. Pierre et Catherine, Adam's second one-act opera, was on sale at the Opéra-Comique in February 1829, just over a year after, with Auber and Scribe's La Fiancée, and ran for more than 80 performances.

Sara Lescot, a member of the chorus at the Valiantville, was married seven months after Pierre et Catherine Adam's premiere. Arthur Pougin, Adam's biographer, calls the marriage "an important and sad event for him." Lescot manoeuvred Adam into marriage, on his behalf and later his own; they separated in 1835, according to Pougin's account. Léopold-Adrien, their only child, died in 1851, but they were expecting a son.

The première full length operas were performed in 1829 by Adam's father, Le vieux fermier, and Danilowa, opéras comiques presented at the Théâtre des Nouveautés and Opéra-Comique respectively. The Danilowa lived well until the July Revolution disrupted Parisian life. Adam was forced to move to London due to his brother-in-law, Pierre François Laporte, manager of the King's Theatre, Haymarket, after the outbreak of cholera. In 1832, Laporte leased the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and in October, he unveiled James Planché's "Military Spectacle" about the Duke of Marlborough, with music by Adam. The piece was lauded and general praise, but The Dark Diamond, a dramatic melodrama that came after on November 5, was unable to repeat its success, and Adam went home to Paris in December. His ballet Faust appeared at the King's Theatre for a short time in London in February and March 1833.

Adam Le chalet was one of his most popular successes with the Opéra-Comique in 1834. Scribe and Mélesville's Jery und Bätely based on Scribe and Mélesville's words. During the next four decades, it was distributed more than 1000 times in Paris. Adam was appointed as a chevalier of the Legion of Honour in May 1836 and later promoted to officer of the order. La fille du Danube, Pierre Taglioni's first contribution to the Paris Opéra, was a ballet performed by him in September 1836. Le postillon de Lonjumeau, a three-act opéra comique, opened at the Opéra-Comique in the days after the premiere of the work. It was the composer's highest operatic success internationally, with foreign managers taking over London and New York in 1837 and 1840.

Adam composed the music for Les Mohicans, a ballet for the Opéra, and four operas for the Opéra-Comique between 1838 and 1839, and in September 1839, he left Paris for St Petersburg. Before the imperial court in February 1840, Taglioni, L'Écumeur de mer (The Pirate), was performed, and two of his operas were performed. At the end of March, he left Russia for Paris, stopping off in Berlin, where he wrote an opera-ballet called Die Hamadryaden (The Tree Nymphs), which he performed at the Court Opera in April 1840.

Adam's next significant work was the ballet Giselle, which he has become best known: the composition by which he is best known: The ballet premiered at the Opéra on June 28th, 1841, based on Heinrich Heine's interpretation of an old tale, with Carlotta Grisi in the title role. Adam's prolific output, including his first grand opera, Richard en Palestine, which was produced at the Opéra in 1844, sparked little attention. He was elected to membership of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2005.

François-Louis Crosnier, the Opéra-Comique's chief, resigned in 1845 and Alexandre Basset took over. Basset soon fell out with Adam, telling him that his shows would never be staged at the Opéra-Comique as long as he was director. A theatre in the Boulevard du Temple opened in 1847, and Adam, working with actor Achille Mirecour, took it over, renaming it Opéra-National. The cost of restoring the theatre was prohibitive, and Adam paid large sums in loans in comparison to investing his own money. The new opera house opened in November 1847, but the chances of the operation from the start seemed skeptic. Both financial and artistic results were poor, and the 1848 Revolution was the company's last blow. The theatres were closed by the incoming regime, and when they were re-opened, there was no demand for tickets at Adam's opera house, which closed on March 28th, leaving him financially poor, and he was left homeless.

Adam borrowed the royalties from his earlier career to help pay off his debts, and like many other French composers, he turned to journalism to earn extra money. He wrote articles and books for Le Constitutionnel and the Assemblée nationale. He also became a professor of composition at the Conservatoire, where his students included Léo Delibes. Nonetheless, Basset had left Opéra-Comique at the time of the war, and Adam was able to return to what Forbes calls his spiritual home under the new director, Émile Perrin.

In July 1850, Giralda, ou La nouvelle psyché, one of Adam's finest operas in Forbes' view, was delivered at the Opéra-Comique. His estranged wife died in 1851, and Adam married Chérie Couraud (1817–1880), who lived for his remaining years. Adam wrote the acclaimed Si j'étais roi, the revived incarnation of his failed Opéra-National, first published in September 1852. He made six new creations in that year, enabling him to clear all of his debts.

Adam continued to compose regularly during the last three years of his life. Le Corsaire, one of Forbes' top ballets, was based on a Byron poem; it was on display at the Opéra in January 1856 after a year of preparations. At the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens on April 29, 1856, Les Pantins de Violette, his final stage work (Violette's Puppets), was presented. Adam died in his sleep at the age of 52. In the Montmartre Cemetery, he was buried.

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