Alfred de Musset

Biography

Musset was born in Paris into an upper-class but poor family. His father held various key government positions but never gave his son money; his mother, from similar circumstances, was a society hostess whose drawing-room parties and dinners left a lasting impression on young Alfred. As a boy, he enjoyed acting impromptu mini-plays based on episodes from old romance stories. His elder brother Paul de Musset later preserved these and other details in a biography.

At age nine, Musset entered the lycée Henri-IV, and at seventeen won the Latin essay prize in the Concours général. After abandoning careers in medicine (due to a distaste for dissections), law, drawing, English, and piano, he became one of the first Romantic writers, publishing his first collection of poems, Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie, in 1829. By age twenty, his rising literary fame was accompanied by a sulphurous reputation fed by his dandy side.

He served as librarian of the French Ministry of the Interior under the July Monarchy. His politics were liberal, and he was on good terms with the family of King Louis Philippe. During the Rhine crisis of 1840, caused by Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers (who as Minister of the Interior had been Musset's superior), Thiers demanded France own the left bank of the Rhine.

Reception

The French poet Arthur Rimbaud was highly critical of Musset's work, writing in his Letters of a Seer that Musset did not accomplish anything because he "closed his eyes" before the visions. Director Jean Renoir's La règle du jeu was inspired by Musset's play Les Caprices de Marianne. Henri Gervex's 1878 painting Rolla, based on a poem by Musset, was rejected by the jury of the Salon de Paris for immorality due to suggestive metaphors in a scene from the poem, but the controversy helped Gervex's career. Jean Anouilh's Eurydice employs an intertextually salient quote of Musset's play On ne badine pas avec l'amour II.5, "The Tirade of Perdican."

Music

Numerous composers, often French, wrote works using Musset's poetry during the 19th and early 20th century. In opera, Georges Bizet's Djamileh (1871) is based on Musset's story Namouna. Offenbach composed an opéra comique Fantasio (1872) with a libretto by Paul de Musset based on the 1834 play of the same name by his brother Alfred. Dame Ethel Smyth composed an opera based on the same work, premiering in Weimar in 1898.

Giacomo Puccini's opera Edgar (1889) is based on La Coupe et les lèvres. André Messager's four-act opera Fortunio is based on Musset's 1835 comedy Le Chandelier. Mary Rosselli Nissim's opera Andrea del Sarto (1931) has a libretto by Antonio Lega based on writings by Musset. Henri Sauguet's Les caprices de Marianne (1954) is based on the play by Musset.

Daniel-Lesur's opera Andrea del Sarto (1968) was based on Musset's play André del Sarto. Sylvano Bussotti set Lorenzaccio to music in 1972. In song, Bizet set Musset's poems "À une fleur" and "Adieux à Suzon" for voice and piano in 1866; the latter had been set by Chabrier in 1862. Pauline Viardot set "Madrid" as part of her 6 Mélodies (1884).

Morfydd Llwyn Owen wrote song settings for "La Tristesse" and "Chanson de Fortunio." Lili Boulanger's Pour les funérailles d'un soldat sets lines from Act IV of La Coupe et les lèvres. Instrumental works include Ruggero Leoncavallo's symphonic poem La Nuit de Mai (1886), Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Cielo di settembre, op. 1 for solo piano (1910), and Rebecca Clarke's Viola Sonata (1919), prefaced by two lines from La Nuit de Mai.

Iconography

Peruvian painter Herman Braun-Vega included Musset among five figures in his 2004 work George Sand dans l'atelier de Delacroix avec Musset, Balzac et Chopin, commissioned for the bicentenary of Sand's birth. Braun-Vega's commentary references the relationship between Musset and Sand. The painting debuted in 2004–2005 at the Couvent des Cordeliers in Châteauroux, France.