Francis de Croisset


Francis de Croisset was a Belgian-born French playwright and opera librettist.

Early life

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. His parents were Alexandre Jacques Wiener and Eugenie Bertha Wiener. After moving to France, where he spent most of his life, he had his name changed by Presidential decree.
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 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.

Career

He was a lawyer by profession, but de Croisset gradually devoted more and more time to the theatre, "until play writing became his vocation."
His opera librettos include Massenet's Chérubin, based on his play of the same name, and Reynaldo Hahn's Ciboulette.
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. Additional plays were produced in New York, including Pierre or Jack?.

Military service

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.

Personal life

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). From her first marriage to banking heir Maurice Bischoffsheim, she had a daughter, the arts patron Marie-Laure de Noailles. Together, Marie-Thérèse and Francis were the parents of two children:
  • Philippe de Croisset, who married Ethel Woodward, a daughter of American banker William Woodward, in 1941. After having two sons, they divorced and Philippe married Jacqueline de la Chaume. After his death in 1965, she became the third wife of actor Yul Brynner.
  • Germaine de Croisset, who married Marquis André Roger Lannes de Montebello, in 1933.
De Croisset died at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly on 8 November 1937. His widow died in Grasse in October 1963.

Descendants

Through his son Philippe, he was a grandfather of two boys. One of which is Charles de Croisset, a French banker. Though his daughter Germaine, he was a grandfather of four boys, including Georges de Montebello, an investment banker and president of the Swiss Helvetia Fund, and Philippe de Montebello, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City from 1977 until 2008.

Filmography