Le jeune Henri is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 by the French composer Étienne Méhul

Étienne Méhul

Etienne Nicolas Méhul was a French composer, "the most important opera composer in France during the Revolution." He was also the first composer to be called a "Romantic".-Life:...

. It takes the form of a comédie mêlée de musique (a type of opéra comique

Opéra comique

Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

) in two acts. The libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

, by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly

Jean-Nicolas Bouilly

Jean-Nicolas Bouilly was a French playwright, librettist, children's writer, and politician of the French Revolution...

, is based on an episode from the life of King Henri IV of France

Henry IV of France

Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....

. It was first performed on 1 May 1797 at the Théâtre Favart

Opéra-Comique

The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...

, Paris. The opera was a failure but the overture was warmly applauded and has often been performed separately since. Known as La chasse du jeune Henri ("Young Henri's hunt"), it is a piece of programme music

Program music

Program music or programme music is a type of art music that attempts to musically render an extra-musical narrative. The narrative itself might be offered to the audience in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music...

 describing the course of a hunt from dawn to the killing of the stag.

Bouilly was later to become famous as the author of Léonore, ou l'amour conjugal (1798), the basis of Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

's only opera, Fidelio

Fidelio

Fidelio is a German opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. It is Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly which had been used for the 1798 opera Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal by Pierre Gaveaux, and for the 1804 opera Leonora...

. He had written the libretto for Le jeune Henri (under the title La jeunesse de Henri IV) in 1791 for Grétry, who had turned it down. Méhul had composed the score but the first staging had been delayed for years for political reasons. The premiere was a "major disaster" thanks to the poor quality of Bouilly's libretto. The audience applauded Méhul but hissed Bouilly. A reviewer in Le courrier des spectacles wrote that "it would be impossible to imagine anything worse" and that there was "no intrigue, no action, nothing of interest."

The overture was encored at the premiere and became a favourite orchestral piece throughout the 19th century. It contains traditional hunting horn calls taken from Philidor

François-André Danican Philidor

François-André Danican Philidor , often referred to as André Danican Philidor during his lifetime, was a French composer and chess player. He contributed to the early development of the opéra comique...

's opera Tom Jones

Tom Jones (Philidor)

Tom Jones is a comédie mêlée d'ariettes, a kind of opéra comique, by the French composer François-André Danican Philidor which first appeared at the Comédie-Italienne, Paris on 27 February 1765...

. It influenced the "Royal Hunt and Storm" in Berlioz

Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...

's Les Troyens

Les Troyens

Les Troyens is a French opera in five acts by Hector Berlioz. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself, based on Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid...

.

Recordings

There have been several recordings of the overture:

• Included on Sir Thomas Beecham Conducts Berlioz, Grétry, Méhul and Massenet with Sir Thomas Beecham
  Thomas Beecham
  Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
  
  conducting the Royal Philharmonia Orchestra (Sony Classical reissue, 2003)
• Included on Méhul Overtures, Orchestre de Bretagne, conducted by Stefan Sanderling (ASV, 2002)
• Included on Méhul The Complete Symphonies, Orchestra of the Gulbenkian Foundation, conducted by Michel Swierczewski (Nimbus Records, 1989)

Sources

• Adélaïde de Place Étienne Nicolas Méhul (Bleu Nuit Éditeur, 2005) pp. 104–105
• Malcolm Boyd (ed.) Music and the French Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
• Booklet notes to the Sanderling recording by Ates Orga