HALEVY, FROMENTAL. (1799-1862). French composer, teacher and writer on music. ALS. (“F. Halevy”). 2½pp. 12mo. N.p., Tuesday [circa 1856-1862]. To an editor. In French with translation.

“Here is the first Cantata by Stradella. It was the one that first appealed to me. The others are not as valuable. Moreover, as it is a style without great variety, one finds right away a monotony that knocks one out. I therefore encourage you to publish only this V [fifth] cantata (I believe that we must keep this numbering) in extenso. I am taking extracts from the others, and I am gathering nectar, trying to find a lot of honey for you. If you would send [someone] to my home tomorrow morning at this time, I will give you some work. Everything will be concluded on Thursday as I told you.

I am not going to the opera today. It has been agreed that they will rehearse without me. Nor tomorrow; I must finish an instrumentation that has been tormenting me.

Thank you for Le Spectator. I send it back to you. I am going to read Le Pays.

Don’t forget the … Push the second edition to have it announced in time. Mr. Roulland remains in public education. A thousand compliments from…

The son of a cantor, Halevy entered the Paris Conservatoire as a child and won the 1819 Prix de Rome. His first commission, Marche Funèbre et De Profundis en Hébreu, composed for the memorial service for Charles Ferdinand d’Artois, the Duc de Berry, who had been assassinated at the Paris Opera by a Bonapartist, won him much notice. He held positions at the Théâtre-Italien and the Opéra-Comique, eventually teaching at the Conservatoire where his pupils included Georges Bizet and Charles Gounod. His best-known work remains La Juive, composed in 1835.

Prolific Italian baroque composer Antonio Stradella (1643-1682) composed more than 170 cantatas as well as operas, oratorios and other instrumental works, which influenced the compositions of Handel. Interestingly, Stradella’s colorful life, during which he engaged in numerous liaisons with married women and which ultimately resulted in his murder, inspired operas by César Franck, Louis Niedermeyer, Friedrich von Flotow, and others.

French magistrate and politician Gustave Rouland (1806-1878) was minister of public education and worship from 1856-1857 and 1860-1863, in which capacity Halevy might have known him as a faculty member at the Conservatoire. Rouland’s tenure is notable for the innovation of libraries within public schools and the expansion of French learned societies.

Le Pays, published from 1849 to 1914, was an official newspaper of Napoleon III during the Second Empire.

Written on three pages of a folded sheet. Evidence of prior mounting shows through but does not affect Halevy’s signature; otherwise in fine condition.