Eugène Cormon


Pierre-Étienne Piestre, known as Eugène Cormon, was a French dramatist and librettist. He used his mother's name, Cormon, during his career, which lasted from 1832 to 1878.

Life and career

Cormon was the son of Jean-Louis Piestre, chef de bureau at the préfecture du Rhône, and Jeanne Cormon, descendent of the family of the Libraires Cormon, whose name he used professionally.
Cormon wrote dramas, comedies and, from the 1840s, libretti; around 150 of his works were published. He was stage manager at the Paris Opéra from 1859 to 1870 where he was in charge of the 1865 premiere of Meyerbeer's last opera, L'Africaine, and was administrator of the Théâtre du Vaudeville from 1874.
The Fontainebleau act as well as the auto-da-fé scene of Verdi's opera Don Carlos are based in part on Cormon's 1846 play Philippe II, Roi d'Espagne.
He married the actress Caroline Paris in 1838, and they had a son, the painter Fernand Cormon. He was made a chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1860.
After his funeral at the Temple protestant du Saint-Esprit de Paris, rue Roquépine, he was buried at the cimetière de Montmartre
At the Moscow Art Theatre in 1927 the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski staged Cormon's melodrama The Gérard Sisters , which he co-wrote with Adolphe d'Ennery.

Libretti

The following films are based on works by Cormon