One-page autographed letter by the French organist and composer of church music and bawdy operettas, July 13, 1882.  The letter is to opera comique librettist Elijah Brault and mentions Irish opera composer Joseph O’Kelly.

My dear Mr. Brault,

More I think about the matter I mentioned to you yesterday, and the very sympathetic way you listened, the more I am convinced of its excellence and success.  Especially since you are already in connection with Mr. O’Kelly and that more than anything else you’ll get special payment agreements and advantageous conditions.

Far be it from me to obsess you.  I just wanted to tell you the great important I attach to the services that I asked you. .  I had to tell you this and how much I already consider myself your debtor.

Cordial handshake.

Léon Vasseur

Vasseur (1844-1917) had three very distinct stages of his career, as a titular organist at Notre Dame at Versailles, (The French Royal Church) where he spent most of his career, a composer of liturgical music and as a composer of bawdy operetta.  A pupil of Camille Saint-Saens and Georges Schmitt at ecole Neidermeyer in Paris, he graduated with all of the first prizes at the age of 18.  With this solid foundation, he was easily able to adapt between composition of both genres.  His second operetta “La Timbale d'Argent” was a huge hit at Offenbach’s Bouffes Parisien Theatre that it helped the theatre to survive financial disaster in 1872.  Three of his other operettas “La cruche cassée” (1875), “Le droit du seigneur” (1878) and “Le voyage de Suzette” (1889) made marks but were not as successful as “La Timbale d’Argent”. He then made the mistake of becoming a producer of operetta, opening an old theatre as Nouveau Théâtre-Lyrique, which failed within the year.  From 1879 – 1897, he was the conductor of the Folies Bergere and can be seen in several of Henri Toulouse Lautrec’s paintings.

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