Jules Barbier

Jules Barbier

Paul Jules Barbier (8 March 1825 – 16 January 1901) was a French poet, writer and opera librettist who often wrote in collaboration with Michel Carré. He was a noted Parisian bon vivant and man of letters .

His libretti for extant operas include:

• Charles Gounod:
  • La Colombe, Faust (*), Le Médecin malgré lui (*), Philémon et Baucis, Polyeucte, La Reine de Saba and Roméo et Juliette (*)
• Victor Massé:
  • Galathée
• Giacomo Meyerbeer:
  • Le pardon de Ploërmel (later revised as Dinorah)
• Jacques Offenbach:
  • The Tales of Hoffmann
• Camille Saint-Saëns:
  • Le timbre d'argent
• Ambroise Thomas:
  • Hamlet (*), Mignon (*) and Francesca da Rimini.

(*) co-written with Michel Carré.

He also wrote the libretto for La Guzla de l'Émir, a one-act comic opera by Georges Bizet. This was never performed and probably destroyed.

He wrote the scenario for Léo Delibes' ballet Sylvia.

Gounod wrote incidental music to Barbier's play Jeanne d'Arc, and the libretto to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's opera The Maid of Orleans was partially based on it.

See also

• Ballets by Jules Barbier

External links

• Polyeucte : opéra in quatre actes / paroles de Jules Barbier et Michel Carré; partition, piano et chant réduite par H. Salomon, opera vocal scores with piano from the Sibley Music Library Digital Score Collection
• Reine de Saba. Inspirez-moi, race divine. Vocal score. English & French from the Sibley Music Library Digital Score Collection