Louis VARNEY

The son of Alphonse Varney (1811-1879), a composer and conductor of the orchestra at the Bouffes-Parisiens in Offenbach’s time, Louis Varney grew up in a highly artistic environment, where he received most of his training. It is not surprising, therefore, that he should follow his father into the singular world of so-called “light” music. Several years after the war of 1870, he was to be found working as the conductor of the orchestra at the Théâtre de l’Athénée-Montrouge and collaborating on various formally eclectic works (among others De bric et de broc and Il Signor Pulcinella, 1876). However, it was at the Bouffes-Parisiens, the true home of operetta, that he was to achieve his greatest success, in 1880, with Les Mousquetaires au couvent, to a libretto by Paul Ferrier and Jules Prével. Although Varney never managed to repeat this consummate achievement, a masterpiece of the genre which has crossed borders and stood the test of time, he composed some forty works which enjoyed varying degrees of success, several of which contain some absolute gems. His greatest triumphs include Fanfan la Tulipe(1882),Babolin (1884), Les Petits Mousquetaires (1885), L’Amour mouillé(1887), La Fille de Fanchon la vielleuse (1891), Cliquette (1893), Les Petites Brebis(1895), La Falote or Le Papa de Francine (1895). Numbered among the undisputed masters of operetta at the end of the century, Varney is remarkable for his keen sense of comedy offset by an elegant style of writing, an unfettered imagination and a melodic inventiveness that seem almost limitless.