Louis Gallet

Louis Gallet (14 February 1835, Valence, Drôme – 16 October 1898) was a French writer of operatic libretti, plays, romances, memoirs, pamphlets, and innumerable articles, who is remembered above all for his adaptations of fiction—and Scripture— to provide librettos of cantatas and opera, notably by composers Georges Bizet, Camille Saint-Saëns and Jules Massenet.

Life and career

By day Gallet supported himself by a minor post in the Administration of Assistance to the Poor and positions, first as treasurer then as general administrator, at the Beaujon hospital, Paris, and other hospitals (ref. Saint-Saëns).

In 1871 Camille du Locle, the manager of the Paris Opéra-Comique offered to produce a one-act work of Camille Saint-Saëns. He proposed as collaborator Louis Gallet, whom Saint-Saëns did not know, and the result was the slight piece La princesse jaune notable as the first japonerie on the operatic stage, Japan having only very recently been opened to Western trade and the first Japanese woodblock prints having been seen in Paris only two years previously. The two worked together harmoniously for years, and it was Saint-Saëns who recommended Gallet as music critic for the Nouvelle Revue, though he was not a musician.