LASSALLE, Jean 1847-1909

Autograph telegram signed "J. Lassalle" to Madame [?Aimée-Marie] Roger Miclos

1 page. Ca. 131 x 112 mm. Postmarked Paris, May 10, [18]91. In black ink on blue paper with perforated edges, the recipient's name and address to upper panel. In French (with translation).

"I am sorry, terribly sorry, because I have invited a crowd of friends to the country for the entire day. Your dispatch did not arrive until yesterday evening. I was out of Paris! With my most sincere regrets, please accept my friendly greetings."

Creased at fold; upper and lower left corners slightly lacking with no loss to text; annotation in blue crayon to upper panel.

In 1872, Lassalle "was engaged for the reopening of the Paris Opéra, where for a while he was the highest-paid male singer and where he remained as the leading baritone until his retirement in 1901. Premières in the house included Massenet’s Le roi de Lahore and Saint-Saëns’ Henry VIII, and in Brussels he sang in the première of Reyer’s Sigurd. In 1879 he appeared at La Scala and in Madrid. At Covent Garden, where he was closely associated with the De Reszke brothers, he was heard from 1879 to 1881 and again from 1888 to 1893. Lassalle had a great success, as both singer and actor, as Nélusko in L’Africaine and another in the London première of Rubinstein’s Demon. Other roles in London included Don Giovanni, William Tell, Hamlet and Rigoletto, with the later addition of Hans Sachs, the Dutchman, and Telramund in Lohengrin. Of these Wagnerian roles, the last two, along with Wolfram in Tannhäuser, were in his repertory at the Metropolitan, where he made his début in 1892 and sang for the last time in 1897. His few and rare recordings were made after his retirement, but they still show a well-preserved voice and, in the aria from Le roi de Lahore, a fine example of the elegant style for which his period is known." J.B. Steane in Grove Music Online.

The recipient may have been the noted French pianist, Aimée-Marie Roger-Miclos (1860-1950). "Roger-Miclos was not only a fine technician but also an unusually interesting musician... She was an active champion of modern composers and of such virtuosic works as Falla's Fantasia baética, Tchaikovsky's First Concerto, and Anton Rubenstein's Fourth." Her playing survives in a number of historically important recordings. Charles Timbrell and David Dubal in The Art of the Piano: Its Performers, Literature, and Recordings, Vol. 1, pp. 294-295.

Item #24143

Price: $85.00  other currencies