Louise Bertin

Louise Bertin
(b Les Roches, 15 Jan 1805; d Paris, 26 April 1877). French composer. She was the daughter of Louis Bertin and sister of Armand Bertin, successive proprietors and editors of the influential Journal des débats.

She was brought up in an artistic and literary milieu, and her energies were channelled into painting and poetry as well as music. She had singing lessons from Fétis, who directed a private performance in 1825 of her first opera, Guy Mannering, following the current fashion for Scott’s novels, with a libretto written by herself. In 1827 Le loup-garou, to a libretto by Scribe, was produced at the Opéra-Comique. But this one-act opera of intrigue, with its Rossinian music, was less characteristic of her lofty aspirations than the two larger operas that followed: Fausto in 1831 for the Théâtre Italien, in which a marked originality of style was observed, and Esmeralda, produced at the Opéra in 1836, to a libretto by Victor Hugo based on his own Notre-Dame de Paris. Despite the prestige of Hugo and the Bertins, or more probably because of it, and falling very much under the shadow of the success of Les Huguenots, the opera was not a success. Berlioz, critic of the Débats, gave Louise Bertin much assistance in the preparation of the production, although this did not extend, as some maintained, to composing the music for her. He acknowledged only that he suggested an improved end to Quasimodo’s aria in Act 4. He held a high opinion of certain parts of the opera and criticized it for its extreme irregularity of phrasing and heavy orchestration, both evidence of the music’s boldness for contemporary ears. Her style had developed very quickly in a short period.