Gretry, André

Gretry, André – Les Deux Avares (Die beiden Geizigen), Komische Oper in zwei Akten (Vocal score with German text and complete dialogue by Richard Kleinmichel)

For more information about the piece read the preface of the full score:

Preface
„If hell does not know this kind of torture, it could adopt it to punish bad musicians“, says André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry about his work on the chorus of the Janissaries from the French-language opéra comique in two acts “Les Deux Avares”, in English “The two misers” or “Everyone takes a risk”.

Grétry came into contact with music from an early age, as he sang as a choirboy, received harpsichord and composition lessons and perfected his musical skills from 1760 to around 1766 in Rome. Then he went to Geneva, where he worked as a music and composition teacher. In 1767, on the advice of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Voltaire (1694-1778), he travelled to Paris, where he was very successful with his opéra comiques. This genre includes folksy pieces from the vaudeville genre as well as opera parodies. Style-defining elements were the alternation of spoken dialogues and sung numbers. Grétry composed a total of around seventy opéra comiques, but he fared like many pioneers of new ideas, „who for posterity fell into the shadow of those for whom they paved the way.“1 Grétry was the favorite composer of the French Queen Marie Antoinette (1755-1793 ). The opera presented in this volume is dedicated to Louis-Marie Duke of Aumont (1732-1799).

„Les Deux Avares“ was written for Marie-Antoinette’s marriage to Louis XVI, which lasted more than a year. The libretto was written by the French author and playwright Charles-Georges Fenouillot de Falbaire de Quingey (1727-1800), who worked full-time in the French financial administration.

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