‎MONSIGNY Pierre Alexandre (1729-1819) :‎
‎Le Deserteur. Drame en trois actes... Représenté par les comédiens italiens ordinaires du roi le 6 mars 1769. Gravé par Melle Vendôme et le sr. Moria.‎

‎16. Paris, chez Claude Hérissant Libraire Imprimeur... (1769), in-folio, 32.5 x 24.5 cm, engraved title page +(1)(dedication) + 267 pp with engraved music . Modern brown half morocco, smooth spine, marbled covers and marbled endpapers. Title page slighty soiled and with some off-setting and some slight browning throughout, but a fine copy. First edition of the main work of this composer. Pierre Monsigny (Fauquemberges 1729 -Paris 1817) was a very successful opera composer who stopped composing altogether after the tremendous success of his opera Félix (1770). His opus 1 - Les aveux indiscrets - was created in 1759. Monsigny is considered as one of the founders of the French comic opera. He lost his patron the Duke of Orléans and his fortune during the French revolution but was nominated in 1813, when he was 84 years old, at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in the seat of Grétry. (Rieman 1961, pp. 242 , Lesure, Catalogue pp.440).‎

Reference : 30545

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