Halévy, JACQUES FRANÇOIS FROMENTAL ÉLIE, composer, was born of Jewish family at Paris, 27th May 1799. He studied at the Conservatoire there under Berton and Cherubini, afterwards at Rome, devoting himself especially to the old church music of Italy, and on his return strove in vain to put on the boards his operas, La Bohémienne and Pygmalion. His next operas, L'Artisan (1827) and Le Roi et le Bâtelier (1828), were failures, but Clari (1828), in which Malibran took the chief rôle, and the comic opera, Le Dilettante d'Aix-en-Provence (1829), were successes, and ere long Halévy found himself the composer of the day, and his masterpiece, La Juive (1835), carried his name over Europe. His next best work is the comic opera, L'Éclair (1835). Later works represented with greater or less success are Guido et Ginévara, Les Treize, Le Drapier, Le Guittarréro, La Reine de Chypre, Les Mousquetaires de la Reine, Le Val d'Andorre, La Tempête, and Dame de Pique, the last two with the libretto by Scribe. Halévy died at Nice, 17th March 1862. Among his pupils were Gounod, Victor Massé, Bazin, and George Bizet, who married his daughter. He worthily carried on the succession of the great school of French opera, midway between Cherubini and Meyerbeer—sharing the perfect mastery of resource of the former and the tendency of the latter to subordinate everything to effect, and instinctively avoiding the commonplace or vulgar. Admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in 1846, he became perpetual secretary in 1854. His éloges were collected as Souvenirs et Portraits (1861), and Derniers Souvenirs et Portraits (1863). His Life was written by his brother Léon (2d ed. 1863) and by Pougin (1865).
LÉON HALÉVY, brother of the foregoing, was born at Paris, 14th January 1802, studied law, filled a chair in the Polytechnic School, and afterwards, from 1837 to 1853, a post in the Ministry of Instruction, which he resigned to give himself entirely to literature. He died at St Germain-en-Laye, 3d September 1883. He wrote the introduction to Saint-Simon's Opinions littéraires, philosophiques, et industrielles (1825), and afterwards, on his own account, histories, poetry, fables, novels, dramatic poems, and translations of Macbeth, Clavigo, &c. His best books are Résumé de l'Histoire des Juifs (1827-28), Poésies Européennes (1837), and La Grèce Tragique (1845-61).
LUDOVIC HALÉVY, son of Léon, was born at Paris, 1st January 1834, and in 1861 became secretary to the Corps Législatif. He first made himself known as the writer of the librettos to Offenbach's burlesques (partly in collaboration with Meilhac):
Orphée aux Enfers (1861), La belle Hélène (1865), La Vie Parisienne (1866), La Grande-duchesse de Gérolstein (1867), Les Brigands (1870). He wrote besides a large number of vaudevilles and comedies, among them La Périchole (1868), Froufrou (1869), Tricoche et Cacolet (1872), Le Mari de la Débutante (1878), and La petite Mère (1880). His Madame et Monsieur Cardinal (1873) and Les petits Cardinal (1880) are delightfully humorous sketches of Parisian theatrical life; his L'Invasion (1872) was a collection of personal recollections of the war. In 1882 he startled the world with his charming idyllic story L'Abbé Constantin, which has been well followed, but not in the same vein, by Criquette (1883) and Deux Mariages (1883). Halévy was admitted to the Academy in 1886.