Francis de Croisset | |
|---|---|
._(Auteur_dramatique)_-_(photographie,_tirage_de_d%C3%A9monstration)_-_(Atelier_Nadar).jpg) Photograph of de Croisset by Nadar | |
| Born | Franz Wiener 28 January 1877 Brussels, Belgium |
| Died | 8 November 1937 (aged 60) Neuilly, France |
| Spouse |
Marie-Thérèse Bischoffsheim
(m. 1910) |
| Children | 2 |
| Relatives | Philippe de Montebello |
| Awards | Croix de Guerre |
Francis de Croisset (French: [fʁɑ̃sis də kʁwasɛ]; born Franz Wiener, 28 January 1877 – 8 November 1937) was a Belgian-born French playwright and opera librettist.
Born as Franz Wiener, he was educated in Brussels on 28 January 1877 into a prominent Jewish-Belgian family that was distinguished in diplomacy and the army.[1] His parents were Alexandre Jacques Wiener and Eugenie Bertha (née Straus) Wiener. After moving to France, where he spent most of his life, he had his name changed by Presidential decree.[1]
At age 17, he rebelled against his parents' wishes that he take up a military career, and ran away to Paris. In 1901, his play Chérubin was produced at the Comédie-Française where Cécile Sorel (later the Comtesse de Ségur) made her debut in it. Jules Massenet set Chérubin to music and, in 1905, Mary Garden sang its première at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo.[1]
He was a lawyer by profession, but de Croisset gradually devoted more and more time to the theatre, "until play writing became his vocation."[1]
His opera librettos include Massenet's Chérubin (1905), based on his play of the same name, and Reynaldo Hahn's Ciboulette (1923).[2]
In 1919, de Croisset went to the United States to study film for the French government. By 1927, his name was attached to more than fifty plays. In 1925, he collaborated with Somerset Maugham on Dr. Miracle, which was produced in New York City.[1] Additional plays were produced in New York, including Pierre or Jack?.[3]
Notwithstanding his aversion to a career in the military, upon the outbreak of World War I, he enlisted in the French Army as a private, serving for four years before mustering out as a Lieutenant. He was twice decorated for his gallantry, including being awarded the Croix de Guerre for his valor.[1]
In 1909, he was engaged to Mlle. Isola, the daughter of one of the directors of the Théâtre de la Gaîté. The engagement was broken off and, instead, he married wealthy widow Marie-Thérèse Bischoffsheim, in 1910. A daughter of Count and Countess Adhéaume de Chevigné, she was a descendant of the Marquis de Sade and her grandmother Laure de Sade was, in part, the inspiration for the character of the Duchess of Guermantes in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past).[4] From her first marriage to banking heir Maurice Bischoffsheim, she had a daughter, the arts patron Marie-Laure de Noailles (later the Vicomtesse de Noailles from her 1923 marriage to Charles, Vicomte de Noailles). Together, Marie-Thérèse and Francis were the parents of two children:
De Croisset died at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly on 8 November 1937.[1] His widow died in Grasse in October 1963.
Through his son Philippe, he was a grandfather of two boys. One of which is Charles de Croisset, a French banker.[7][8] Though his daughter Germaine, he was a grandfather of four boys, including Georges de Montebello (1934–1996), an investment banker and president of the Swiss Helvetia Fund, and Philippe de Montebello (b. 1936), the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City from 1977 until 2008.[10]
