Joseph-Alphonse Esménard

Joseph-Alphonse Esménard is a French poet born with Pélissanne (Provence) in 1770 and died in Fondi (Italy) the June 25th 1811.

Biography

Writer of royalist newspapers, Esménard left France after August 10th 1792 and voyaga in all Europe, in England, in Holland, in Germany, in Italy, in Constantinople and in Greece. Returned in Paris in 1797, it wrote in Daily the but had to emigrate again after the 18 fructidor, not without to have made two months of prison to the Temple. It returned to France after the 18 brumaire, but was not long in leaving for Saint-Domingue as secretary the general Leclerc. With the return of this voyage, it was named chief of the office of the theaters to the ministry for the Interior thanks to protection of Savary, but it was not long in setting out again to follow the admiral Villaret de Joyeuse to the Martinique.

Income definitively in France, it accepted important favors of the imperial government, which gave rise to think that it had rendered services not very avowable: it was named critic theaters and bookstore, critic of the Journal of the Empire and head of division to the ministry for the Police force. In 1810, it was elected with the French Academy.

To have published in the Newspaper of the Empire a satirical article against an envoy of the Emperor in Russia, it was exiled a few months in Italy. At the time of the return voyage, he died in an car accident with Fondi, close to Naples.

He is the brother of the journalist Jean-Baptiste Esménard.

Works

Esménard is especially known like the author of a didactic poem and descriptive heading Navigation , initially published in 8 songs in 1805, then reduced to 6 songs in 1806. It is a precise work, nourished by the observations made by the author during his voyages, but of a considerable trouble, increased by a monotonous versification and an complete absence of action and movement.

the triumph of Trajan , opera in three acts on a music of Jean-François Lesueur, filled of flattering allusions for Napoleon i, was represented triumphantly in 1807. It also composed Fernand Cortez or the conquest of Mexico (1809), opera in three acts in collaboration with Victor-Joseph-Etienne de Jouy, music of Gaspare Spontini, which had much success, and of the worms to the glory of the Emperor, inserted for a share in the poetic Couronne of Napoleon (1807).

External bond

Card on the site of the French Academy

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