François-Joseph de Lagrange-Chancel

Charles François-Joseph Victor de Chancel, known as Lagrange-Chancel , born with the castle of Antoniac with Razac-on-the Isle, close to Périgueux (the Dordogne) on January 1st 1677 and died in the same place the December 26th 1758, is a dramatic author and French poet.

Biography

Lagrange-Chancel said: “I could not read that I knew rimer”. Child prodigy, it composed very young person of the worms on any kind of subjects. As soon as it could read, it devoured the parts of Pierre Corneille and the novels of Calprenède. At seven years, it was put at the college of Périgueux then was sent to Bordeaux to continue its studies. It discovered the theater there and started to compose of the parts that it interpreted with other children. It chooses to carry to the scene a fact various recently arrived in the city; this subject raised protests and the mother of Lagrange-Chancel closed the theater and sent the young author, then fourteen years old, in Paris.

It arrived in the capital provided with its tragedy of Jugurtha and was not long in being made a reputation in the living rooms by its facility make worms. The princess of Conti, charmed by a sonnet which it had composed, admitted it with the number of its pages and, filled with enthusiasm by Jugurtha , presented its protected to Louis XIV, which required of Jean Racine, then withdrawn from the theater, to guide it in its literary companies. Jugurtha , altered, was given to the theater on January 8th 1694 under the title of Adherbal and gained a very sharp success. Lagrange-Chancel was named lieutenant in the regiment of the king then in the musketeers and obtained finally the load of honorary Master of hotel of the duchess of Orleans.

According to Lagrange-Chancel, in 1713, the duke of the Force, familiar of the duke of Orleans, with which the author had bound, concealed to him his tragedy Ino and Mélicerte , one of its best parts. It was the signal of an estrangement and the hatred of Lagrange-Chancel extended to the Régent which had taken the party of the duke. According to others, Lagrange-Chancel was excited against the duke of Orleans by the small court of Sceaux, around the duke of Maine.

In any event, the poet composed against the Regent of the satirical odes of a very great violence which it entitled Philippiques . They circulated in the form of handwritten copies and made an enormous noise. It showed there in particular the duke of Orleans to have tried to poison the young person Louis XV. Lagrange-Chancel was imprisoned with the islands of Lérins from where he escaped at the end of two years. He flees in Sardinia, in Spain, then in Holland where he composed a fourth Philippique , then a fifth right after the death of the Regent. Fifteen months after this event, in 1729, it could return to France thanks to the duke of Bourbon, to which it provides certain secret information.

It made represent some tragedies: Cassius and Victorinus , on a pious subject, which it dedicated to its protective princess of Conti; Orphée , which failed; Pygmalion which was refused by the Actors of the Com3edie fran1caise. Lagrange-Chancel renonça then with the theater and was withdrawn in its castle of Antoniac where it was devoted to historical work.

Works

Literary posterity

When Lagrange-Chancel appeared in Paris, one wanted to see in him the successor of Root. But none of its parts - of which some had success - justified this hope. The best among them, Amasis , suffers from the comparison with the Mérope (1743) of Voltaire, on the same subject. If the author has the direction of the theater and the dramatic situations, the characters are cold and false and hard and prosaic versification.

Philippiques are not without talent and are animated by a certain breath, but it is that of hatred and the exaggeration more than that of poetry.

Dramatic works

Adherbal roy of Numidie (or Jurgurtha ), tragedy, represented on January 8th 1694
Oreste and Pylade , tragedy, 1697
Méléagre , tragedy, 1699
Athénaïs , tragedy, 1699
Amasis , tragedy, 1701
Médus, king of Mèdes , lyric tragedy in 5 acts and a prolog, music of François Bouvard, represented with the royal Academy of music on July 23rd 1702
Alceste , tragedy, 1703
Cassandre , tragedy lyric, represented with the royal Academy of music on June 22nd 1706
Ino and Mélicerte , tragedy, 1713
ARIANE , lyric tragedy in 5 acts and a prolog, collaboration with Pierre-Charles Roy, music of Jean-Joseph Mouret, represented with the royal Academy of music on April 6th 1717
Olympic Games or the sick prince , heroic comedy, represented for the first time at the Commedia dell'Arte, on November 12th 1729
Cassius and Victorinus, martyrs , Christian tragedy drawn from Gregoire de Tours, represented on October 6th 1732
Orphée , tragedy out of machines, not represented, 1736
the Girl supposed , comedy, not represented
the Death of Ulysses , tragedy, not represented
the Crime punished , tragedy, not represented

See too

Its plays and their representations on site CÉSAR

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