Essai d'un chant de la Loüisiade, poëme héroïque
Paris: Chez Prault fils, 1745. Softcover.
Small folio (ca. 305 x 230 mm. Plain ivory wrappers with titling and date in manuscript to upper. 1f. (recto title, verso blank), 25, [i] (notice) pp. With large attractive engraved illustrations to title and head of text. Untrimmed.
Wrappers quite worn, soiled and creased; spine partially split. Slightly worn; large dampstain to outer portion of several leaves; slightly cockled.
Good.
First Edition. Quite rare. Cioranescu: Bibliographie de la littérature française du dix-huitième siècle, Vol. 2, 50366.
Piron was a French epigrammatist and dramatist. "In 1719 he came to Paris where he began a long and successful association with the Fair Theatres. His first work produced there, the monologue Arlequin Deucalion (1722), brilliantly flouted the ban on spoken dialogue imposed by the official theatres and immediately established his reputation. In several opéras comiques of the 1720s he collaborated with composers of the stature of Rameau (L’Endriague, 1723; L’enrôlement d’Arlequin, 1726; La P[ucelage], ou La rose, 1726; La robe de dissension, 1726) and Royer (Le fâcheux veuvage, 1725; Crédit est mort, 1726). Their newly composed music not only relieved the staple diet of traditional melodies that was still the norm at the Fairs but also, in its ‘operatic’ style, acted as a clever foil to the doubles entendres and the farcical, episodic nature of the plays themselves." Graham Sadler in Grove Music Online.
Item #35781
Price: $100.00 other currencies