Léon Carvalho

Léon Carvalho (18 January 1825 – 29 December 1897) was a French impresario and stage director.

Born Léon Carvaille in Port Louis, Mauritius, he came to France at an early age. He studied at the Paris Conservatory and sang as a baritone at the Opéra-Comique (1850–55), where he met the soprano Marie Caroline Miolan, whom he married in 1853.

He then gave up singing and took on the direction of the Théâtre Lyrique in 1856, where he presented works by Beethoven, Mozart, Rossini, Weber, but most importantly opened his doors to new French composers turned down by the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, such as Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Saint-Saëns and Delibes. He also staged the premiere of the revised version in a French translation of Verdi's Macbeth in 1865.

In early 1868 Carvalho started another operatic venture at the Théâtre de la Renaissance. However he was declared bankrupt on 6 May 1868, forcing him out from both theatres.

Carvalho then moved to manage the Théâtre du Vaudeville. Although the principal focus was straight plays, he revived the melodrama – a play with incidental music. He commissioned Bizet to write music for a production of Daudet’s L'Arlésienne on 1 October 1872.

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