593 - Emmanuel Chabrier Signed 1886 ‘Gwendoline’ Hardcover Piano-Vocal Score (First Edition)

Emmanuel Chabrier Signed 1886 ‘Gwendoline’ Hardcover Piano-Vocal Score (First Edition) French Romantic composer and pianist (1841-1894) best known for the orchestral rhapsody España and the operas L'étoile and Gwendoline. Largely self-taught as a composer, Chabrier developed a distinctive musical language that influenced a later generation of French composers, including Debussy, Ravel, and Poulenc. First edition hardcover piano-vocal score for Emmanuel Chabrier’s opera Gwendoline, 303 pages, 8 x 11.25, published by Enoch Frères & Costallat of Paris in 1886 and bound in contemporary green quarter leather with marbled boards and endpapers. Signed and inscribed by Chabrier on an opening page in ink, “Hommage bien affectueux à Auguste Dupont, Emmanuel Chabrier, Bruxelles 10 avril 86,” the date of the opera’s world premiere. The decorative title page identifies the work as an opera in two acts and three tableaux, with a libretto by Catulle Mendès and a piano-and-vocal reduction by Chabrier himself. The score contains a printed dedication to the Comtesse de Narbonne-Lara and a cast page recording the first performance at Brussels’s Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in April 1886. In very good to fine condition, with rubbing and wear to the binding, and some spotting to the signed page. Gwendoline, Chabrier’s first grand opera, received its world premiere at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels on April 10, 1886. The production was conducted by Belgian violinist and conductor Joseph Dupont, whose elder brother, the noted pianist and Royal Conservatory of Brussels professor Auguste Dupont, was the recipient of this presentation copy. Chabrier inscribed the score to Auguste in Brussels on April 10, 1886, placing the presentation on the very day and in the city of the opera’s world premiere. Published that year by Enoch Frères & Costallat, this first-edition piano-vocal score was reduced for voice and piano by Chabrier himself, as stated on the title page.