Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

Isouard, Nicolò [Nicholas; Nicolas; Nicolo] [Isoiar, Nicolò; Nicolò de Malt(h)e]

(b Valletta, Malta, 16 May 1773/6 Dec 1775; d Paris, 23 March 1818). French composer of Maltese birth. He was among those who determined a final form for opéra comique.

1. Life.

2. Works.

WORKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MARIE BRIQUET/DAVID CHARLTON, HERVÉ LACOMBE (1, work-list), HERVÉ LACOMBE (2)

Isouard, Nicolò

1. Life.

Isouard was baptized John-Joachim-Edward-Nicholas. As a composer he often used the names Nicolas or Nicolò de Malte. His father, Fortunato Isouard Xuereb, was a merchant and secretary to the government storehouses, married to Elena Maria Lombardo. Constant Campion, Commander of the Maltese Order of Knights, financed Nicolas's first stay in Paris and education at the Pensionnat Berthaud, a preparatory school for the Engineers and Artillery, where he learnt Latin, drawing and mathematics, and the piano with Pin. The Revolution forced him to leave France in 1790, and back in Malta his father placed him in a merchant's office. He played the piano in society with success and studied counterpoint with Michelangelo Vella and Francesco Azzopardi, who were both associated with the Neapolitan school. On 10 November 1791 Vincenzo Anfossi (brother of the composer) became organist at the church of St-Jean-de-Jerusalem in Malta, and Isouard became his assistant. But, soon after, he was sent by his father to Palermo as a merchant's assistant where he studied composition with Giuseppe Amendola; later, in Naples, he worked for the German bankers Cutler and Herzelin, completing his composition studies with Sala and, thanks to Princess Belmonte's recommendation, with P.A. Guglielmi.

Early in 1794 Isouard's début as a composer took place in Florence with the opera L'avviso ai maritati, which was enthusiastically received and later given in Lisbon, Dresden and Madrid. From this time, he abandoned commerce and called himself Nicolò de Malte in order not to compromise his family. His next opera was Artaserse, commissioned by the singer Senesino; it was produced with success in Livorno. The Grand Master of the Maltese Order of Knights, Rohan, commissioned a mass from Isouard (dated January 1795), and in November or December of 1795 Isouard was received as Donatus of the order. On the death of Vincenzo Anfossi in January 1796 he was appointed organist of the church of St-Jean-de-Jerusalem. During this time he wrote his sacred works, but also composed Italian operas (some of them based on French plays) for the Maltese theatre. In July 1797, the impresario Rosario di Majo sent him to Naples, where he persuaded the singer Paolo Febraro to come and work in Malta. Following the French invasion in June 1798, Isouard and his father collaborated with the French; three months later General Vaubois appointed Isouard commissioner of the Théâtre Manoel, and when the surrender was signed in September 1800 he took Isouard with him back to Paris. Le petit page, Isouard's first Parisian opéra comique, was given in the Théâtre Feydeau on 14 February 1800, and was composed in collaboration with Rodolphe Kreutzer. Their second collaboration, the serious opera Flaminius à Corinthe (1801), was a failure, but Isouard had success in the same year with Le tonnelier and the French translation of L'improvisata in campagna. His collaboration with the librettist E.J.B. Delrieu and his friendship with F.B. Hoffman influenced his sense of lyric drama, and he secured his first great success in 1802 with Michel-Ange, to a libretto by Delrieu.

Isouard's easy sociability, together with his membership of the freemasons, probably helped him make his way in Parisian society, and his mercantile experience led to the formation of the publishing concern Le Magasin de Musique (5 August 1802) with Cherubini, Méhul, Rode, Kreutzer and Boieldieu. Intended to further the works of its co-founders, it survived until 1811, although Isouard retired from the association in 1807, and published some of his own works. After his death his widow (under the name Veuve Nicolo) assured the distribution of his compositions and arrangements before ceding the collection to Troupenas in 1825. His collaboration with the librettist C.J. Etienne, editor of the Journal des deux mondes, began with Un jour à Paris (1808). In 1810 they produced the biggest financial success of this period at the Opéra-Comique with the fairy-tale opera Cendrillon, which imitated Grétry's Zémir et Azor with its moral subject based on mistaken appearances, the transformation of Cendrillon (like Azor) and the rose as a symbol of beauty. This success reconciled Isouard with his father, who came from Malta for his son's wedding to Claudine Berthault (b 1785) on 11 January 1812.

Isouard's creativity was stimulated by the return in 1811 of his chief competitor, Boieldieu, from eight years in Russia. In his later works Isouard showed extraordinary power of expression, which the levity and rapid composition of earlier operas had not admitted. When Boieldieu was elected to the Institut de France in 1817, however, Isouard broke off relations with his old friend, and they were still unreconciled when Isouard died the following year. His opera Aladin was completed by Benincori, who himself died before the première on 6 February 1822.

Isouard's daughter Ninette (1814–76), known as Ninette Nicolò, was a pianist and composer, mainly of songs. His brother Joseph-Alexandre-Victor-Antoine-Calcédoine-Jacques-Emmanuel Isoiar (1794–1863) was a tenor in opéra comique in France and elsewhere in Europe, afterwards (1825–33) becoming a director of theatrical companies in Lille, Ghent, Rouen, Nîmes and Toulouse.

Isouard, Nicolò

2. Works.

Isouard's style is defined by his sense of declamation, the predominance of dance forms, occasional harmonic boldness (always for expressive ends), essentially syllabic ensembles with rapid parlando and repetition of phrases; his finales are in general less well-organized than those of Dalayrac or Boieldieu. From Cendrillon onwards his writing combines vocal virtuosity with a search for greater expression. His most striking trait is the way in which he matches in music the sense and tone of the words, as, for example, in Michel-Ange where an instrumental chromatic descent accompanies Pasquino as he falls asleep (no.7), or in Cimarosa (entr’acte) where the orchestra paints the night calm, snoring and the beginning of a fire.

L'intrigue aux fenêtres, created from a jeu de scène, and L'une pour l'autre, called a ‘comédie d'intrigue’ in the score, recall the origins of opéra comique in spoken theatre and this is further suggested by Isouard's use of melodrama techniques in much of his work. He often draws on situations linked directly with music. For example, Cimarosa depicts the sound of a piano (no.1), the composer searching for a melody and imitating various instruments (no.3), a performance class (no.4) and the bravos of the public and the whims of performers (no.5). Lully et Quinault presents the composer imagining the staging of his work (no.4). In the interests of verisimilitude Isouard also used pre-existing material, for example, an air by Lully (Lully et Quinault, no.4), or Quinault's words (Armide, Act 5). To create a sense of mystery he called on the glass harmonica (Magicien sans magie, no.10) and the celestial playing of the piano (Aladin, no.11); offstage and onstage music were also used to great effect. The musical portrayal of characters or emotions and the adaptation of musical style to situation become crucial: in Cendrillon the coloratura of the coquettish sisters contrasts with the syllabic declamation of the true and simple feelings of Cendrillon and Alidor; Cendrillon's singing of a popular air (‘Il était un p'tit homme’) confirms her simple character. Isouard often used specific styles and instruments to connote the setting, as for example in Joconde, in which, 50 years before Gounod in Mireille, Isouard created a Provençale local colour: a musette, introduced in the overture, is taken up again as a ritornello (no.12) and developed in the finale; a drone effect is created (nos.4, 10, 17); jingles and tambourins are used; the oboe and horn suggest a pastoral setting in the couplets (no.4) where an ‘oboi soli in guisa de Boscaresccia’ is called upon in the minor section. The fête at the end of Act II (no.9) of Jeannot et Colin seems to have been inspired by the onstage music with three orchestras in Mozart's Don Giovanni, and prefigures the vast polychoral constructions of the grands opéras of Rossini and Meyerbeer. The characters of the three quadrilles, les Bergères in 6/8 (A), les Basques in 2/4 (B) and les Troubadours in 2/4 (C), are defined musically and instrumentally as they succeed and combine with each other in the design A B AB C ABC.

Isouard's published scores provide remarkable glimpses of performance: he indicates with diagrams the precise position of the characters on stage and fixes tempos with Maelzel's metronome (see, for example, Les deux maris, L'une pour l'autre). Paradoxically, although criticized at first for his Italian style, his music represents ultimately one of the most important contributions to the determining of a final form for French opéra comique, balancing spoken comedy and opera, grace, spirit, emotion and will. This established him as the successor to Grétry, whose example he actively looked to follow in Jeannot et Colin, and Monsigny.

Isouard, Nicolò

WORKS

printed works published in Paris unless otherwise stated

stage

first performed in Paris by the Opéra-Comique at the Théâtre Feydeau unless otherwise stated

L'avviso ai maritati (op, 2, F. Gonella), Florence, Pergola, 4 June 1794, F-Pc

Artaserse re di Persia (op, 3, P. Metastasio), Livorno, Avvalorati, Sept 1794

Il barbiere di Siviglia (ob, after P.-A. Beaumarchais), Malta, c1796

Rinaldo d'Asti (op, G. Carpani, after J.-B. Radet and P.-Y. Barré: Renaud d'Ast), Malta, c1796

L'improvvisata in campagna (ob, after E.J.B. Delrieu), Malta, 1797; rev. as L'impromptu de campagne (1, Delrieu), Paris, OC (Favart), 30 June 1801 (1801)

Il tonneliere, Malta, 1797; rev. as Le tonnelier (oc, 1, Delrieu and F.A. Quêtant), Paris, OC (Favart), 19 May 1801

I due avari (ob), Malta, c1797

Il barone d'Alba chiara (op), Malta, c1798

Ginevra di Scozia (op, after L. Ariosto), Malta, c1798

Le petit page, ou La prison d'état (cmda, 1, R.C.G. de Pixérécourt and L.T. Lambert), Paris, Feydeau, 14 Feb 1800 (n.d.), collab. R. Kreutzer

Flaminius à Corinthe (op, 1, Pixérécourt and Lambert), Paris, Opéra, 27 Feb 1801, Po (inc.), collab. Kreutzer

La statue, ou La femme avare (oc, 1, F.-B. Hoffman), 26 April 1802

Michel-Ange (op, 1, Delrieu), 11 Dec 1802 (1802)

Les confidences (comédie mêlée de chants, 2, A.G. Jars), 31 March 1803 (1803)

Le baiser et la quittance, ou Une aventure de garnison (oc, 3, L.B. Picard, M. Dieulafoy and C. de Longchamps), 18 June 1803, B-Bc, F-Pn, collab. E.-N. Méhul, A. Boieldieu and Kreutzer

Le médecin turc (opéra-bouffon, 1, P. Villiers and A. Gouffé), 19 Nov 1803 (1804)

L'intrigue aux fenêtres (opéra bouffon, 1, J.-N. Bouilly and L.E.F.C. Mercier-Dupaty), Paris, OC (Favart), 25 Feb 1805 (1805)

La ruse inutile, ou Les rivaux par convention (op, 2, Hoffman), Paris, OC (Favart), 30 May 1805 (1805)

Léonce, ou Le fils adoptif (comédie mêlée de musique, 2, B.-J. Marsollier), 18 Nov 1805 (1805)

La prise de Passau (oc, 2, Mercier-Dupaty), 8 Feb 1806

Le déjeuner de garçons (cmda, A.-F. Creuzé de Lesser), 24 April 1806 (c1806)

Idala, ou La sultane (oc, 3, Hoffman), 1 Aug 1806

Les rendez-vous bourgeois (opéra-bouffon mêlé d'ariettes, 1, Hoffman), 9 May 1807 (1807)

Les créanciers, ou Le remède à la goutte (oc, 3, J.-B.-C. Vial), 10 Dec 1807

Un jour à Paris, ou La leçon singulière (oc mêlé de musique, 3, C.-G. Etienne), 24 May 1808 (1808)

Cimarosa (oc, 2, Bouilly), 28 June 1808 (1808)

Zélomir, ou L'intrigue au sérail (oc, 3, Etienne), 25 April 1809

Cendrillon (opéra-féerie, 3, Etienne, after C. Perrault: Contes de ma mère l'oye), 22 Feb 1810 (c1810)

La victime des arts, ou La fête de famille (oc, 2, L.-M. d'Estourmel), 27 Feb 1811, collab. H.-M. Berton and J.-P. Solié

La fête de village, ou L'heureux militaire (oc, 1, Etienne), 31 March 1811

Le billet de loterie (cmda, 1, Creuzé de Lesser, J.-F. Roger), 14 Sept 1811 (c1811)

Le magicien sans magie (oc, 2, Creuzé de Lesser and Roger), 4 Nov 1811 (c1811)

Lully et Quinault, ou Le déjeuner impossible (oc, 1, P.C. Gaugiran-Nanteuil), 27 Feb 1812 (?1812)

Le prince de Catane (op, 3, R.R.L. Castel, after Voltaire: L'éducation d'un prince), 4 March 1813 (c1813)

Le français à Venise (oc, 1, M.A.J. Gensoul), 14 June 1813 (1813)

Bayard à Mézières, ou Le siège de Mézières (oc, 1, Mercier-Dupaty and R.A.P. Allisan de Chazet), 12 Feb 1814, vs (1814), collab. Boieldieu, C.-S. Catel and L. Cherubini

Joconde, ou Les coureurs d'aventures (comédie mêlée de chants, 3, Etienne), 28 Feb 1814 (c1814)

Jeannot et Colin (oc, 3, Etienne), 17 Oct 1814 (c1814)

Les deux maris (oc, 1, Etienne), 18 March 1816 (1816)

L'une pour l'autre ou L'enlèvement (oc, 3, Etienne), 11 May 1816 (c1816)

Aladin, ou La lampe merveilleuse (opéra-féerie, 5, Etienne), Paris, Opéra, 6 Feb 1822 (c1822), completed by A.M. Benincori

Une nuit de Gustave Wasa (op, 2), inc. [sketches and chorus for Act 1], completed by F. Gasse, 1825

other works

all unpublished; MSS chiefly in F-Pc, Pn

Sacred (before 1800): 3 Ky, 3 Gla, Cro, Mag, 2 Dixit Dominus, 2 Domine, 5 motets, all mixed vv, orch; Gloria patri, Diffusa est gratia, both 1v, orch; 14 other settings, mostly autograph

Cants.: La paix, solo vv, chorus, orch, 1802, copy, F-Po [on Peace of Amiens]; Hébé (Commandeur de St-Priest); 8 cants (Commandeur de Rohan)

Airs and romances: Duos, in the style of Cari and Steffani; 6 canzoncine, ou Petits airs italiens, pf/hp acc. (n.d.) [Fr. texts]; 6 duettinos, ou Petits duos italiens, pf/hp acc. (n.d.); Je ne sais quoy (F.-A.-E. de Planard), 1809 (n.d.); La romance historique de Marie Louise (J. Lablée), 1811 (n.d.); Dialogue entre Euterpe et Erato (Dupuy des Islets), 1813; Le ménestrel: ronde villageoise, 1814, Journal d’Euterpe (1816), no.3, p. 130; Rosier d’amour (N. Lefebvre), Journal d’Euterpe (1816), no.4, p.106; Les adieux, ou La constance du bon vieux temps (Lefebvre), c1816 (n.d.); numerous other works, 1–2 vv, acc. pf, gui, insts, many in Pn

Isouard, Nicolò

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Choron-FayolleD

J.D. Martine: De la musique dramatique en France (Paris, 1813), chap.21

F. Fétis: ‘Nicolo Isouard’, Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, vii (1840), 32–3

Castil-Blaze: ‘Le piano de Grétry’, France musicale (10 Aug 1845)

‘Nicolo’, Le ménestrel (16 Dec 1860)

C. Pierre: Le Magasin de musique à l’usage des fêtes nationales et du Conservatoire (Paris, 1895/R), 105–15

E. Wahl: Nicolo Isouard: sein Leben und sein Schaffen auf dem Gebiet der Opéra Comique (Munich, 1906)

G. Kaiser, ed.: C.M. von Weber: sämtliche Schriften (Leipzig, 1908) [incl. ‘Cendrillon von Isouard’ [1811], 102; ‘Joconde von Isouard’ [1816], 266; ‘Das Lotterielos von Isouard’ [1817], 289]

J. Tiersot: Lettres de musiciens écrites en français du XVe au XXe siècle, i (Turin, 1924), 423–7

H. Gougelot: La romance française sous la Révolution et l’Empire (Melun, 1938–43)

M. Pincherle: Musiciens peints par eux-mêmes: lettres de compositeurs écrites en français (1771–1910) (Paris, 1939), 73–4

G. Favre: Boieldieu, sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris, 1944–5)

A.S. Garlington jr: The Concept of the Marvelous in French and German Opera 1770–1840 (diss., U. of Illinois, 1965)

D.P. Charlton: Orchestration and Orchestral Practice in Paris, 1789 to 1810 (diss., U. of Cambridge, 1973)

C. Nazloglou: Le goût musical en France à travers l'art lyrique, 1815–1840 (diss., U. of Nice, 1975)

K.A. Hagberg: ‘Cendrillon’ by Daniel Steibelt: an Edition with Notes on Steibelt's Life and Operas (diss., Eastman School of Music, 1976)

A. Devriès and F. Lesure: Dictionnaire des éditeurs de musique française (Geneva, 1979)

B.V. Daniels: ‘Cicéri and Daguerre: Set Designers for the Paris Opéra, 1820–1822’, Theater Survey, xxii (1981), 69–90

J. Warrack, ed.: Carl Maria von Weber: Writings on Music (Cambridge, 1981) [incl. reviews of Isouard's operas]

C.J. Robison: One-act Opéra-Comique from 1800 to 1810: Contributions of Henri-Montan Berton and Nicolo Isouard (diss., U. of Cincinnati, 1986)

J. Azzopardi: Nicolò Isouard de Malte (Mdina, 1991)

R. Legrand and P. Taïeb: ‘L'Opéra-comique sous le Consulat et l'Empire’, Le théâtre lyrique en France au XIXe siècle, ed. P. Prévost (Metz, 1995)