Augustin Eugene Scribe

Augustin Eugène Scribe , 1791-1861, French dramatist and librettist. He began his prolific and highly successful writing career with vaudeville sketches. One of the first playwrights to mirror bourgeois morality and life, he infused 19th-century French opera and drama with liberal political and religious ideas. Among the best of his comedies, which are notable for their well-structured plots, is Bataille de Dames (1851). His historical drama Adrienne Lecouvreur (1849) was later adapted as an opera. Scribe wrote librettos for about 60 operas by such composers as Auber, Meyerbeer, Halévy, Bellini, and Verdi.

Scribe, [Augustin] Eugene (1791–1861), playwright. The leading French dramatist of the first half of the 19th century, he reacted to the overblown, romantic melodramas of his day by devising the “well‐made” play in which essentially middle‐class problems were presented in neat, economically contrived plots and with prosaic, commonplace dialogue. While these plays were theatrically effective, many detractors felt they merely substituted taut construction for vitality and depth. Although a number of his works were translated and met with varying success in America, he was best known and largely remembered here for a single drama, Adrienne Lecouvreur.

Scribe, (Augustin) Eugène (b Paris, 1791; d Paris, 1861). Fr. dramatist and librettist. Most prolific librettist of his day, complete works comprising 76 vols. Among composers for whom he wrote libretti were Adam, Auber (38), Bellini (La sonnambula), Boieldieu (La dame blanche), Cherubini, Ciléa (Adriana Lecouvreur), Donizetti (5, incl. L'elisir d'amore and La favorite), Gounod, Halévy (6, incl. La juive), Hérold, Macfarren, Meyerbeer (5, incl. L'Africaine, Les Huguenots, and Le prophète), Offenbach, Rossini (2, incl. Le Comte Ory), Suppé, Verdi (Vêpres siciliennes and Un ballo in maschera), and Zandonai.