Charles Collé

Charles Collé is a Chansonnier and Dramaturge French born with Paris the April 14th 1709 and died in the same city the November 3rd 1783.

Biography

Charles Collé was wire of a substitute of the prosecutor of the king to the Châtelet of Paris and cousin of the playwright Jean-François Regnard. His/her father wanted to intend it for the studies of right, but it was diverted some to be devoted to the song, which did not prevent it from carrying out, in parallel, a profitable career in the businesses.

It bound with several famous chansonniers of its time: Alexis Piron, Pierre Roller and, via this last, Charles-François Panard, and started by composing of the worms Amphigouri ques. Then it bound with Crébillon wire and became in 1729 one of the first members of the Société of the Vault, so famous for its cheerfulness.

In parallel, it was initially attached, during nearly twenty years, with a financial rich person, Mr. de Meulan, general receiver of the general information of Paris, then with the duke of Orleans, large amateur of songs and theater of company, which named it its reader and his secretary. This load was worth interests in the farms to him, as some gratifications which rounded its fortune.

Stuck composed of many songs, often ribald, of which it published the least dared in collections entitled merry Chansons, put at the day by an ass onyme, onissime , with a very great success. Nickel silver Grimm, in its literary Correspondence (February 1763), did not hesitate to compare it with Anacréon. Occasionally, it composed of the patriotic songs whose most famous, the catch of Port-Mahon (1756), was worth a pension of 600 pounds to him.

In the second time of its career, it composed for the theater of the duke of Orleans a crowd of parts and parades extremely merry, which made it call “the Crow of the parade”, and of which several were collected in the Théâtre of the boulevards .

In the third time, it also gave comedies more ambitious though always light, longer and more worked, more elegant and truer, like the Gallant Swindler or the Truth in the wine . He was encouraged in this vein by his wife, whom he had married on late in 1757, and which wanted that he became a true writer.

Lastly, Collé wanted to leave the restricted framework of the theaters of company and made receive a part with the Comédie-Française, Dupuis and Desronais , comedy larmoyante which had 17 representations in 1763. But its second work in this kind, the Shooting party of Henri IV , though represented in its guard in 1762, was interdict with Paris until the death of Louis XV in 1774. This part, which appears at the head of sound Théâtre of company , gained however a great success after the advent of Louis XVI and remains his most famous work.

The career of Stuck suffered from the change of tone which was carried out towards 1766 in the company of the duke of Orleans following the connection of this one with Madam de Montesson. A posted preoccupation with a respectability gradually made it put at the variation, while Carmontelle triumphed. Its part the Widow fell to the Comédie-Française in 1770. These circumstances, with the loss of his wife, saddened her old age.

In its literary historical Newspaper or Memories (Paris, 1807, 3 volumes in-8), published after its death but covering the period 1748 - 1772, it regulates its accounts with its competitors and its enemies and superficially shows libertine and merry, but at the bitter and preserving bottom, hating the actors, the Philosophers, the French Academy, Voltaire and Rousseau.

Works

Holy-Beuve saw in Stuck a historical and moral witness of its time.

The parts which it had composed for the duke of Orleans were joined together under the title of Théâtre of company , 1768, 2 volumes in-8. Some of its parades are, but disfigured, in the Théâtre of the Boulevards , 1756. The collection of its songs, published in 1807, form 2 volumes in-18.

the rival Mother , 1745
the Truth in the wine or the nuisances of the galantery , comedy in 1 act and prose, 1747
Daphnis and Églé , music of Branch, 1753
the Shooting party of Henri IV , 1762
Dupuis and Desronais , comedy in 3 acts and free verse, represented for the first time by the ordinary French actors of the King on January 17th 1763
the sounding Island , music of Monsigny, 1768
the Widow , comedy, 1770
the head with wig or the baillif , small dramatic tale in 1 small act and prose, 1777
historical Newspaper or Memories literary , Paris, 1807, 3 volumes in-8; rééd. par. H. Bonhomme, 1868

References

; External bond Its plays and their representations on site CÉSAR

; Bibliography

Cardinal Georges Grente (to dir.), Dictionary of the French letters. The XVIIIe century , nlle. re-examined edition and update under the direction of François Moureau, Paris, Beech, 1995, p. 346
Jacques Truchet, Note of the Theater of company , in: Theater of the XVIIIe century , Paris, Gallimard, Library of the Pleiad, 1974, volume II, pp. 1459-1465

; Notes

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