Édouard Du Puy
Jean Baptiste Édouard Louis Camille Du Puy (also Dupuy, * 1770 in Corcelles -Cormondrèche, Canton of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, † April 3, 1822 in Stockholm ) was a violinist, singer, conductor and composer, especially at the royal courts of Denmark and Sweden worked.
Life
Neither you Puys birth year and place, nor his parents are known with certainty. He received his first musical training from a relative who was town musician in Geneva. With about 14 years, he moved to Paris to get violin and piano lessons. From 1786, he studied composition with Jan Ladislav Dusík. In 1787 he was a violinist in the chapel of the Prussian Prince Henry at Schloss Rheinberg and 1789 later as the successor of Johann Abraham Peter Schulz its concertmaster. At the time, he studied in Berlin harmony with Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch.
Dismissed because of his way of life in 1790, he went on a concert tour through northern Europe. In 1793 he was employed at the court orchestra in Stockholm, first as a third concertmaster. Soon he was able to make himself as a composer for the ballet a name and he became conductor at the Stockholm theater. Beginning of 1799 he made his debut as a singer also. However, the presentation of a song by Carl Michael Bellman in honor of Napoleon made him fall out of favor with King Gustav IV Adolf. Du Puy was forced to leave Sweden.
In Copenhagen he hired himself first as a music teacher. Soon he became a violinist with a private concert notoriety. He was admitted to the court orchestra and soon their leader. Even greater glory gained the good-looking and with a remarkable voice you blessed Puy from 1802 as a singer, including in the title role of Mozart's Don Giovanni. In 1803 he married Anna Luise Müller ( 1778-1831 ), the daughter of an engraver, with whom he ran a music shop, but still had numerous affairs. Besides his work at the court you Puy devoted himself to the urban music scene, such as the 1804 launched by his club concerts of the Harmonious Society (Det harmoniske Selskab ). For, founded in 1801 the Royal huntsman Corps ( Kongens Livjægerkorps ), whose founding members he belonged, he composed marches. When the British besieged Copenhagen 1807, he was nominated for his personal courage and commitment to lieutenant. Then he no longer performed as a singer, but were members of the court singing lessons, including Friederike Charlotte, the wife of Prince Christian Frederick and later King Christian VIII affair with her led in 1809 to Du Puys expulsion from Copenhagen and a year later to divorce the prince and princess. For Puys You left behind a wife and children in Copenhagen attended King Frederick VI.
Du Puy traveled first to Paris, but returned in 1810 to Sweden, where in the meantime Charles XIII. sat on the throne, and the French marshal Jean -Baptiste Bernadotte, since 1818 King Charles XIV John, had adopted as his successor. By the end of his life you lived Puy as a singer, composer of operas and ballets and Kapellmeister in Stockholm. For the Singspiel Föreningen (union), with whom he celebrated the Norwegian connection to Sweden, he was in 1816 awarded the title of professor. In the same year he founded a school orchestra for strings. One of his students was Franz Berwald. Du Puy was the first, who performed Mozart 's operas ( Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro, 1813, 1821 ) in Sweden. In 1819 he suffered a stroke. When he died in 1822, was heard Mozart's Requiem - also for the first time in Sweden.
Work
You Puys music style was based on Rossini, Mozart and contemporary French composers such as Nicolas Isouard and Nicolas Dalayrac whose music he sought also to his haunts publicize themselves. His operas, especially his 1806 Danish first performed Singspiel Ungdom above galskab ( Youth and Folly ) enjoyed great popularity. Its also arisen in Copenhagen Singspiel Felice was not performed until after his death. He also composed numerous ballets, concerts and chamber music, folk songs and marches.
Afterlife
Participation You Puys in the defense of Copenhagen in 1807 and his reputation as a notorious womanizer made him the main character in the ballet premiered in 1871 The King's Volunteers on Amager by August Bournonville.