Item #23718 Autograph letter signed "Pauline Gueymard" to "Mon cher Director" [?Alphonse Royer, Director of the Paris Opéra]. Pauline GUÉYMARD-LAUTERS.

Autograph letter signed "Pauline Gueymard" to "Mon cher Director" [?Alphonse Royer, Director of the Paris Opéra]

2 pp. of a bifolium. Octavo. Dated Veuilly, February 19, 1862. In black ink. On stationery with Guéymard's initials embossed at head. In French (with translation).

Guéymard-Lauters writes that it is impossible for her to be prepare for Friday's rehearsal.

"In spite of the greatest desire in the world, it is impossible for me to know the changes... by Friday... I'm going to beg you, therefore, not to post the piece for Friday, and put myself at your disposal for Monday... Today [Charles] Gounod came to make me say my recitative and his opinion is that I cannot know it by Friday."

Slightly worn, soiled and stained; creased at folds; one small tear to lower edge of first leaf; minor annotation in black ink in another hand above Guéymard-Lauters's monogram.

This letter may refer to Gounod's opera, La Reine de Saba, which premièred at the Paris Opéra on February 28, 1862 with Guéymard-Lauters in the leading soprano role.

Guéymard-Lauters "made her début in 1854 at the Théâtre Lyrique, Paris. From 1861 to 1876 she was engaged at the Paris Opéra, making her début there as Valentine (Les Huguenots). She created Balkis in Gounod’s La reine de Saba (1862); Alda in Mermet’s Roland à Roncevaux (1864); Eboli in Verdi’s Don Carlos (1867) and the Queen in Thomas’ Hamlet (1868). Her roles also included Leonora (Il trovatore), Donna Anna, Gluck’s Alcestis, Fidès (Le prophète) and Léonor (La favorite). She was married to the tenor Louis Guéymard." Elizabeth Forbes in Grove Music Online.

Alphonse Royer (1803-1875) was a French theatre manager and librettist. "Royer was director of the Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris from 1853 to 1856, and (with [Gustave] Vaëz as deputy for the first four years) of the Opéra from 1856 to 1862, when he was appointed Inspecteur-général des beaux-arts. As well as writing the libretto for Donizetti’s La favorite (1840), Royer and Vaëz helped to make Italian opera accessible to the Parisian public with their French translations of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1839), Rossini’s Otello (1844) and Verdi’s I Lombardi (as Jérusalem, 1847). In 1874, a few days before the opening of the new Paris Opéra, Royer brought out his brief Histoire de l’Opéra, a survey beginning with Lully and recounting anecdotes of 19th-century composers." Christopher Smith in Grove Music Online.

Item #23718

Price: $165.00  other currencies

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