UAli Baba’s cave! The premises of the French Romantic Music Center look like an attic filled with treasures. Located a stone’s throw from the Saint-Martin canal, the offices of this private research institute are home to hundreds of boxes filled with old paper. Do not rely on the modest appearance of these documents. The music booklets and manuscripts they contain are very rare works, some signed by the greatest French composers.
Founded in 2009, straddling France and Italy, the Palazzetto Bru Zane takes its name from the private mansion that serves as its headquarters in Venice. Concerts are regularly held there. Fully funded by Nicole Bru, heiress of the Upsa pharmaceutical laboratories, to the tune of 4 million euros per year, this research institute focuses on the music of the “Grand Siècle”, this enchanted parenthesis between 1780 and 1920, where the Hexagon has produced countless masterpieces.
READ ALSOIn pursuit of conductor Klaus Mäkelä “In France, we too often summarize the French music of the 19the century to Bizet, Debussy or Gounod. But hundreds of composers worked at the same time in this register that we refer to today as “romantic music”. Is it because this genre has been deemed “easy and vulgar”, less than 1% of this repertoire is played. Yet the melodies of this period speak directly to the heart,” says Alexandre Dratwicki, 46, artistic director of the center.
Musical nuggets
This musicologist from Moselle – whose twin brother, Benoît Dratwicki, runs a center in Versailles dedicated to Baroque music – has gathered around him a handful of passionate researchers. They attempt to emerge from the oblivion of artists who, not content with having lived in the shadow of Wagner or Verdi, did not have the chance to see their works recorded.
“Our mission is to make their music accessible. Because, since it is not recorded on disc, it often boils down, today, to scores gathering dust in library reserves”, says Sébastien Troester, who took part, for two years, in the reconstitution of the one of Offenbach’s most famous operettas, Parisian lifein its original version never played.
READ ALSOWhen Hamlet was French! Their work sometimes comes under the rescue mission, carried out in an emergency. Like that day in winter 2015 when Alexandre Dratwicki called all his friends to move boxes about to be sent to landfill. “It was a matter of preventing the destruction of the archives of a sheet music printer whose warehouses in Montrouge were slated for demolition,” recalls Étienne Jardin, who works alongside Alexandre Dratwicki and Sébastien Troester.
Most often, this mission is similar to that of a Benedictine monk perusing the catalogs of archives throughout Europe before copying pages and pages of scores. The profession has its playful moments when it comes to reconstructing, like a puzzle, a work whose pages have been scattered across the four corners of the continent. “The rest of the time, it’s a bookworm function in the conservatories of major European capitals,” smiles Alexandre Dratwicki. “We eat paper all day long,” jokes Sébastien Troester.
Half-private detectives, half-junk dealers
These seekers share a “nosy” character. Half-private detectives, half-second-hand dealers, they hunt down not only the scores, but also, sometimes, the forgotten drafts to find “the” original version of the work. They collect photos, correspondence but also the staging booklets which describe very precisely the dramaturgy of the operas.
All their findings are carefully scanned and posted online for researchers around the world. The Palazzetto Bru Zane database has several hundred thousand documents with free access. “We only charge for reproduction rights, and even then… at a very advantageous rate,” says Alexandre Dratwicki.
No genre puts him off. His eclectic tastes embrace both symphonic music, light airs intended for cabarets as well as the sacred music repertoire. “When you love music, you love everything. We do not distinguish between scholarly music and popular songs,” he continues. The center he directs has thus made it possible to resurrect very different composers: such as Paul Véronge de La Nux, Fernand de La Tombelle and even Benjamin Godard. “Their only point in common was to have gone out of fashion”, slips Antonella Zedda, general administrator of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, after having been production director at the Salle Pleyel then at the Philharmonie de Paris.
On this summer’s eve, the work of the center will allow a few female composers of the 19the century to which the Palazzetto Bru Zane has also dedicated a fine set of records*. They are called Marthe Bracquemond, Cécile Chaminade, Hedwige Chrétien, Marie-Foscarine Damaschino, Jeanne Danglas, Clémence de Grandval, Marthe Grumbach, Madeleine Jaeger, Marie Jaëll, Madeleine Lemariey, Hélène de Montgeroult, Virginie Morel, Henriette Renié or even Charlotte Sohy. From June 19 to July 4, their music, which has been ignored by the general public for too long, will be played in Paris – notably at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
READ ALSOKarine Deshayes: “Now I like to die on stage” The program begins in the auditorium of Radio France, this Monday, June 19, with motets from the second Empire and the IIIe Republic. On June 20, Karine Deshayes will revive an opera created in 1831 and performed only three times: Faust, composed by Louise Bertin. Three days later, David Kadouch and the Orchester de chambre de Paris conducted by Hervé Niquet will bring these women composers, once immensely famous and now overlooked, back to life. But also to other renowned creators whose work is too rarely performed: such as Mel Bonis, Lili and Nadia Boulanger, Louise Farrenc, Augusta Holmès, Rita Strohl, or even Pauline Viardot.
For nearly fifteen years, the Palazzetto Bru Zane can be proud of having unearthed a slew of operas: Herculaneumby Felicien David, Five-March, by Gounod, The Queen of Cyprusfrom Halévy, The WizardMassenet or The Barbarians, by Saint-Saens. But also operettas: such Master Peronilla Or The journey to the moon, by Offenbach – whose version given by Les Frivolités Parisiennes met with great success last year. So many “lost jewels” which have also inspired several singers, including the Franco-Swiss tenor Benjamin Bernheim and the Belgian soprano Jodie Devos, to make beautiful recordings.
As 2025 approaches the bicentenary of the birth of Jacques Offenbach’s great rival, Louis-Auguste-Florimond Ronger, better known by his pseudonym Hervé, and the 150e anniversary of Bizet’s death in 1875… the Palazzetto Bru Zane continues its tireless work of musical archeology by seeking unpublished works by these two composers. But also new treasures in the Victor Massé, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Ambroise Thomas, Adolphe Adam and Daniel-François-Esprit Auber collections. “There are still many nuggets to be found”, enthuses Alexandre Dratwicki.
* Composers8 CDs + a 152-page box set, €47.70.