Charles Lecocq | Autograph score of the overture to "Les ondines au champagne" and assorted sketches, c.1865 and later

Charles Lecocq.

Autograph music notebook containing the overture to Les ondines au champagne and miscellaneous autograph sketches

the overture notated in brown ink on a single 14-stave system per page, with autograph title ("Ouverture..."), five bars for bass drum (?) added below the original system on the first page, some bars notated in abbreviated form using blank numbered bars, a few deletions, corrections and revisions; the sketches for a variety of unidentified vocal and instrumental numbers, presumably for Lecocq's operettas, including a 1-page sketch for an Ave Maria, one page containing a list of 24 numbers from a four-act work, another containing the titles of 12 dance movements, in pencil and occasionally ink, mostly on two staves

23 pages (overture) and 88 pages (sketches), oblong 4to (20.9 x 27.8cm), the notebook ruled with 16 staves, one page stamped with the address "2, Rue Caumartin", original stiff calf-backed wrappers, no place or date [c.1865 and later], browning to edges, discolouration and creasing to last leaf

The French composer of lighthearted opérettes and opéras comiques Charles Lecocq (1832-1918) came to prominence after the 1871 revolution, first in Brussels and then in Paris, with such works as La fille de Madame Angot (1872), La petite mariée (1875) and Le petit duc (1878). Although he came to assume the mantle of Offenbach, his approach to the theatre was essentially quite different to that of the latter, regarding it chiefly as a place for escapism rather than realism. The operetta Les ondines au champagne, a 'folie aquatique' in one act (libretto by J. Pélissié and H. Lefebvre), was first performed at the Théâtre des Folies-Marigny on 5 September 1865. The currently unidentified sketches in the present volume provide a rich source for the study of Lecocq's composing processes.