Michel CARRÉ

Born in Besançon, Michel Carré moved to Paris in 1840 to take painting lessons with Paul Delaroche, but soon turned to writing. After the publication of his first work of literature, Les Folles Rimes et Poëmes (1842), he began a career as a playwright with the one-act play La Jeunesse de Luther (1843, Odéon). In line with widespread practice at the time, he worked in collaboration with Jules Verne, Adolphe de Leuven or Eugène Cormon, the co-author of the libretto for Bizet’s Pêcheurs de perles. However, his main collaborator was Jules Barbier, with whom he produced plays, comedies, vaudevilles and opera librettos. Carré and Barbier were Gounod’s librettists of choice, and for him they wrote Le Médecin malgré lui (1858), Faust (1859), Philémon et Baucis (1860), La Reine de Saba (1862) and Roméo et Juliette (1867). They also collaborated with Meyerbeer on Le Pardon de Ploërmel (1859) and with Ambroise Thomas on Mignon (1866) and Hamlet (1868). Extremely prolific, Carré and Barbier adapted various world-famous masterpieces of literature for the opera stage, favouring works by Dante, Shakespeare or Goethe. This led them to be judged somewhat over-harshly by some because, although they simplified their models and focused on their sentimental dimension, they did remain faithful to their spirit.