Théodore Lajarte


Théodore Lajarte was a French musicologist, librarian, and composer.

Early years

Lajarte was born in Bordeaux. His full name has been given as Théodore Édouard Dufaure de Lajarte. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris under Aimé Leborne and soon thereafter composed a large number of operettas, none of which have survived.

Librarian and musicologist

He is best remembered for his position as an archivist at the Paris Opera. After his appointment in 1873 as second librarian at the Paris Opera Library, he organized the theatre's historical scores and parts, publishing a chronological inventory of scores under the title Bibliothèque musicale du théâtre de l'Opéra in 1876 with a corrected and completed edition in 1878. He continued working at the library until 1890. As a musicologist, he contributed articles on music to newspapers and published reductions for piano and singing of old French operas and ballets, with the first being a reduction of Lully's opera Thésée. Overall sixty-two books in nine series under the title Chefs-d’œuvre classiques de l’opéra français were issued.

Composer

He was a composer of several works for the theater, including Monsieur de Floridor, a one-act opéra comique in two tableaux, lyrics by Charles Nuitter and Étienne Tréfeu after Louis Anseaume, first performed on 11 October 1880 by the Opéra-Comique at the second Salle Favart with Belhomme, Grivot and Mlle Ducasse. He gave the Opéra the one-act ballet-pantomime Les Jumeaux de Bergame, first performed on 26 January 1886 at the Palais Garnier, with words after Florian by Nuitter and Mérante and choreography by Mérante, with Mlle Subra, very well received. His other works include Le Secret de l’Oncle Vincent, Mam’zelle Pénélope, Le Neveu de Gulliver, Le Portrait and Le Roi de Carreau.
Lajarte died in Paris at the age of 63 and is buried at Montmartre Cemetery.