Louis Joseph Ferdinand Herold |

Ferdinand Herold

French composer. Son of the pianist and composer François Joseph Herold (1755-1802). Since childhood, he studied playing the piano, violin, studied music theory (with F. Fetis). In 1802 he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with L. Adam (piano), K. Kreutzer (violin), S. Katel (harmony), and from 1811 with E. Megül (composition). In 1812 he received the Prix de Rome (for the cantata Mademoiselle de Lavaliere). He spent 1812-15 in Italy, where his first opera, The Youth of Henry V, was staged with success (La gioventu di Enrico Quinto, 1815, Teatro Del Fondo, Naples). From 1820 he was an accompanist at the Théâtre Italienne (Paris), from 1827 he was a choirmaster at the Royal Academy of Music.

Herold’s main area of ​​creativity is opera. He wrote mainly in the genre of comic opera. In the best of his lyric-comedy works, vitality, genre specificity of images are combined with romantic coloring and lyrical expressiveness of music. The opera The Meadow of the Scribes (Le Pré aux Clercs, based on the novel The Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX by Mérimée, 1832), which sings of pure, true love and ridicules the emptiness and immorality of court circles, is one of the significant works of French comic opera 1 th half of the 19th century. Herold gained fame with the romantic opera Tsampa, or the Marble Bride (1831), which gained popularity on the opera stages of all European countries.

Author of six ballets, including: Astolfe and Gioconda, Sleepwalker, or the Arrival of a New Landowner (pantomime ballets, both – 1827), Lydia, Vain Precaution (most famous; both – 1828), ” Sleeping Beauty (1829). All ballets were staged at the Paris Opera by choreographer J. Omer.

In 1828 Herold partly revised and partly re-wrote the music for the two-act ballet The Vain Precaution, first staged by Dauberval in Bordeaux in 1789, with music composed of excerpts from works popular at the time.

Herold’s music is characterized by melodiousness (his melody is based on the song-romance intonations of French urban folklore), inventiveness of orchestration.

Herold died on January 19, 1833 in Tern, near Paris.

Compositions:

operas (over 20), incl. (dates of productions; all at the Opéra Comique, Paris) – Shy (Les rosières, 1817), Bell, or the Devil Page (La Clochette, ou Le Diable page, 1817), First person you meet (Le Preminer Venu, 1818) , Money changers (Les Troquerus, 1819), Mule driver (Le Muletier, 1823), Marie (1826), Illusion (L’Illusion, 1829), Tsampa, or Marble bride (Zampa, ou La Fiancée de marbre, 1831), Louis (1833, completed by F. Halevi); 6 ballets (dates of performances) – Astolf and Gioconda (1827), La sonnambula (1827), Lydia (1828), La fille mal gardée (1828, on the Russian stage – under the name “Vain Precaution”), Sleeping Beauty (La Belle au bois dormant, 1829), Village wedding (La Noce de village, 1830); music for drama Missolonghi’s Last Day by Ozano (Le Dernier jour de Missolonghi, 1828, Odeon Theatre, Paris); 2 symphonies (1813, 1814); 3 string quartets; 4 fp. concert, fp. and skr. sonatas, instrumental pieces, choirs, songs, etc.