Adolphe Charles Adam (; 24 July 1803 – 3 May 1856) was a French composer, teacher and music critic. A prolific composer for the theatre, he is best known today for his ballets Giselle (1841) and Le corsaire (1856), his operas Le postillon de Lonjumeau (1836) and Si j'étais roi (1852) and his Christmas carol "Minuit, chrétiens!" (Midnight, Christians, 1847, known in English as "O Holy Night").
Adam was the son of a well-known composer and pianist, but his father did not wish him to pursue a musical career. Adam defied his father, and his many operas and ballets earned him a good living until he lost all his money in 1848 in a disastrous bid to open a new opera house in Paris in competition with the Opéra and Opéra-Comique. He recovered, and extended his activities to journalism and teaching. He was appointed as a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, France's principal music academy.
Together with his older contemporary Daniel Auber and his teacher Adrien Boieldieu, Adam is credited with creating the later Romantic French form of opera.
He later said that he never became a fluent sight-reader of a score. His mother concluded that her son needed a rigorous education, and he was sent to a boarding school, the Hix institute in the Champs-Élysées. It had a high reputation both academically and musically: his elder contemporary (and pupil of Louis Adam) Ferdinand Hérold had been educated there,Pougin (1877), p. 24 and (1906), p. 7 and the music master was Henry Lemoine, another of Louis' former students. Adolphe was not an academic child, and recalled in his memoirs how he had recoiled from the study of Latin, which he found "barbaric".Adam, p. IX The fall of the French Empire in 1814–15, and the ensuing economic problems badly affected Louis Adam's income, and to save money his son was sent to a less expensive school. The staff there were capable, but Adam remained as indifferent to musical theory as to Latin.Pougin (1877), p. 30 At the age of 17 Adam enrolled at the Conservatoire, where he studied the organ with François Benoist, counterpoint with Anton Reicha and composition with Adrien Boieldieu. Adam's biographer Elizabeth Forbes calls Boieldieu the chief architect of Adam's musical development.Forbes, Elizabeth. "Adam, Adolphe (Charles)", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, 2001. Retrieved 11 September 2021 He set his student exercises that taught him to compose sustained melodies without showy modulations and other technical devices.Pougin (1877), pp. 31–32 Adam's father did not want his son to become a professional composer: he would have preferred him to pursue a commercial or academic career, and although he gave Adam board and lodging he refused to subsidise any musical activities.Pougin (1877), p. 35 By the age of 20 Adam was contributing songs to the Paris vaudeville theatres, writing what he later called "bad romances and worse piano pieces", and giving music lessons.Adam, p. XVI
Duchaume, timpani and chorus master of the new Théâtre du Gymnase, offered Adam an unpaid post playing the triangle in the orchestra. Adam said that as he would have paid to be allowed to join he was happy to serve without a salary, but he was quickly promoted to a well paid position:
In 1824 Adam entered the Conservatoire's most important musical competition, the italic=no. He gained an honourable mention, and the following year, at his second attempt, he won the second prize. Forbes writes that Adam derived more benefit from helping Boieldieu with the preparation of his opera La Dame blanche, produced at the Opéra-Comique in December 1825. Adam's piano transcriptions of themes from the opera were published in 1826 and made him enough money to tour the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland in summer 1826 with a family friend, Sébastien Guillié. In Geneva he met the librettist Eugène Scribe, with whom he later collaborated on nine stage works.
Seven months after the premiere of Pierre et Catherine Adam married Sara Lescot, a member of the chorus at the Vaudeville. Adam's biographer Arthur Pougin describes the marriage as "an important and unfortunate event for him".Pougin (1877), p. 63 By Pougin's account, Lescot manoeuvred Adam into marriage, and on his side – and later hers also – it was a loveless union; they separated in 1835.Pougin (1877), p. 106 Their only child, Léopold-Adrien, born in 1832, killed himself in 1851.Lavignac, p. 3496; and "Notoriété après décès de Léopold-Adrien Adam", France Archives. Retrieved 11 September 2021
Adam's first full length operas were premiered in 1829: Le jeune propriétaire et le vieux fermier and Danilowa, opéras comiques given at the Théâtre des Nouveautés and the Opéra-Comique respectively. Danilowa ran well until Parisian life was disrupted by the July Revolution. That, and an outbreak of cholera, led Adam to move to London; this was at the suggestion of his brother-in-law, Pierre François Laporte, manager of the King's Theatre, Haymarket. In 1832 Laporte leased the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and in October, as an afterpiece to The Merchant of Venice, he presented James Planché's His First Campaign, a "Military Spectacle" about the Duke of Marlborough, with music by Adam."Covent Garden Theatre", The Sun, 24 September 1832, p. 1; and "Theatre Royal, Covent-Garden", Morning Herald, 26 September 1832, p. 2 The piece was received with "loud and general plaudits","The Theatres", English Chronicle and Whitehall Evening Post, 2 October 1832, p. 4 but The Dark Diamond, a historical melodrama in three acts, which followed on 5 November, failed to repeat its success, and Adam went home to Paris in December. He returned briefly to London when his ballet Faust was presented at the King's Theatre in February and March 1833.
During 1838 and 1839 Adam composed the music for Les Mohicans, a ballet for the Opéra, and four operas for the Opéra-Comique, and in September 1839 he left Paris for St Petersburg. His ballet for Taglioni, L'Écumeur de mer (The Pirate) was given before the imperial court in February 1840, and two of his operas were staged. He left Russia for Paris at the end of March, stopping off in Berlin, where he wrote an opera-ballet, Die Hamadryaden (The Tree Nymphs), which he conducted at the Court Opera in April 1840.
Adam's next substantial work was the composition by which he has become best known: the ballet Giselle. Based on Heinrich Heine's version of an old tale, the ballet premiered at the Opéra on 28 June 1841 with Carlotta Grisi in the title role. Adam continued his prolific output, including his first grand opera, Richard en Palestine, which was produced at the Opéra in 1844 but aroused little interest. In that year he was elected to membership of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.Pougin (1877), p. 179
Adam assigned the royalties from his earlier works to help pay off his debts, and like many other French composers in need of money he turned to journalism to earn extra income. He contributed reviews and articles to Le Constitutionnel and the Assemblée nationale. He also became a teacher, accepting the post of professor of composition at the Conservatoire, where his students included Léo Delibes.Curzon, p. 9 Meanwhile, Basset having left the Opéra-Comique at the time of the revolution, Adam was able to return to what Forbes calls his spiritual home under its new director, Émile Perrin.
During the last three years of his life Adam continued to compose prolifically. His late works include what Forbes rates as one of his finest ballets, Le corsaire, based on a poem by The Corsair; it was presented at the Opéra in January 1856, after a year's preparation. His final stage work, the one-act opérette Les Pantins de Violette (Violette's Puppets) was given at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens on 29 April 1856. Four nights later Adam died in his sleep, at the age of 52. He was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery. "Adam, Adolphe", Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs. Retrieved 15 September 2021
Although he was a prolific composer of opera, Adam wrote ballet music even more fluently. He commented that it was fun, rather than work. Giselle is the best known; Baker calls it a major work in the history of choreography, which continues to be performed with the same success. Forbes comments that although Giselle has the advantage of a particularly memorable plot, La jolie fille de Gand, La filleule des fées and Le corsaire are of equal quality musically.
Little of Adam's religious music has entered the regular repertory, with the exception of his Christmas carol, "Minuit, chrétiens!", known in English as "O Holy Night".Slonimsky et al, p. 13
Adam's memoirs were published posthumously, in two volumes: Souvenirs d'un musicien (1857) and Derniers souvenirs d'un musicien (1859).
In 2023 an exhaustive two-volume study of his stage works (one volume on opera, the other on ballet) by Robert Ignatius Letellier and Nicholas Lester Fuller entitled Adolphe Adam, Master of the Opéra-Comique 1824-1856 was published. Review (in French) of Adolphe Adam, Master of the Opéra-Comique 1824-1856 at the Forum Opéra site, accessed 30 January 2024.
Early successes
Peak career
Financial disaster
Last years
Works
Notes, references and sources
Notes
Sources
External links
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