Jean-Robert Planquette
Jean-Robert Planquette was born in Paris on July 31, 1848. He attended the Paris Conservatory after which he supported himself by writing popular songs and chansonettes for Parisian café-concerts. He started writing operettas in 1874, and achieved world fame with The Chimes of Normandy in 1877. He wrote many more operettas after that, the most successful being Rip Van Winkle (1882), Nell Gwynne (1884) and Mam’zelle Quat’Sous (1897). He died in Paris on January 28, 1903.
The Chimes of Normandy (Les Cloches de Corneville) is one of the most famous French operettas of all time, and it is still occasionally revived. Introduced in Paris at the Folies Dramatiques on April 19, 1877, its success was so immediate and permanent that within a decade it had been given over a thousand times in Paris alone. It was first seen in New York in 1877, and in London in 1888, major successes in both places. The book by Clairville and Gabet presents the life of fishing and peasant folk in Normandy during the regime of Louis XV. Germaine is in love with the fisherman, Jean, but finds opposition in her miserly old uncle, Gaspard, who has other plans for her. To escape her uncle, Germaine finds employment with Henri, a Marquis, who has suddenly returned to his native village to take up residence in the family castle rumored to be haunted. The mystery of the haunted castle is cleared up when the discovery is made that Gaspard has used it to hide his gold; and the bells of the castle begin to ring out loud and clear again. Gaspard, after a brief siege with insanity, is made to sanction the marriage of Germaine and Jean at a magnificent festival honoring the Marquis; at the same time it is suddenly uncovered that Germaine is in reality a Marchioness.
This is an operetta overflowing with ear-caressing melodies. The most famous are Germaine’s bell song, “Nous avons, hélas, perdu d’excellence maîtres”; the Marquis’ lilting waltz-rondo, “Même sans consulter mon coeur”; and Serpolette’s cider song, “La Pomme est un fruit plein de sève.”
Eduard Poldini
Eduard Poldini was born in Budapest, Hungary, on June 13, 1869. His music study took place at the Vienna Conservatory. Poldini subsequently established his home in Vevey, Switzerland, where he devoted himself to composition. His most significant works are for the stage—both comic and serious operas that include The Vagabond and the Princess (1903) and The Carnival Marriage (1924). He was also a prolific composer of salon pieces for the piano, familiar to piano studies throughout the world. In 1935 Poldini received the Order of the Hungarian Cross and in 1948 the Hungarian Pro Arte Prize. He died in Vevey, Switzerland on June 29, 1957.
Poupée valsante (Dancing Doll) is Poldini’s best known composition, a fleet, graceful melody contrasted by a sentimental counter-subject. The composer wrote it for solo piano. Fritz Kreisler adapted it for violin and piano, and Frank La Forge for voice and orchestra. It has also often been transcribed for orchestra.
Manuel Ponce
Manuel Maria Ponce was born in Fresnillo, Mexico, on December 8, 1882. His main music study took place in Europe where he arrived in 1905: composition with Enrico Bossi in Bologna; piano with Martin Krause in Berlin. After returning to Mexico he gave a concert of his own compositions in 1912. For several years he taught the piano at the National Conservatory in Mexico City, and from 1917 to 1919 he was the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra there. During World War I he lived in Havana and New York. After the war he went to Paris for an additional period of study with Paul Dukas. From 1933 to 1938 he was professor of folklore at the University of Mexico. In 1941 he toured South America, and in 1947 he was the recipient of the first annual Mexican Arts and Sciences Award established by the President of Mexico. He died in Mexico City on April 24, 1948.
Ponce was a modernist who filled his orchestral compositions with the most advanced resources of modern harmony, counterpoint and rhythm. But in his songs he possessed a spontaneous and ingratiating lyricism, often of a national Mexican identity. It is one of these that has made him famous in semi-classical literature: “Estrellita” (“Little Star”), a song with such a strong Spanish personality of melody and rhythm that it was long believed to be a folk song. Ponce first published it in 1914 but it did not become universally popular until 1923 when it was issued in a new arrangement (by Frank La Forge) and translated into English.