Duncour (Louis Erto)

Louis Erto , known as Duncour ( French Louis Heurteaux dit Dancourt ; 1725 , Paris - July 29, 1801 , Paris ) - French actor and librettist .

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From a young age he played in the amateur theater, from where he was in the late 1740s. invited to the acting troupe, formed on behalf of Voltaire for the performance of his plays. In this troupe, he played with the young Loken . Then he performed as part of the French theater groups in Germany: in Bayreuth (1751-1752), Munich (1753), Vienna (1754) and Berlin (1755), but with the beginning of the Seven Years War he was forced to return to France. In 1761 he made his debut on the stage of Comedy Francaise , but was not successful.

In 1762 , at the invitation of Charles Simon Favard, Duncour joined the French troupe assembled in Vienna by Count Durazzo , initially as an actor, but soon assumed mainly the responsibilities of a playwright and librettist. In 1763, by order of Christophe Willibald Gluck, he reworked Alain Rene Lesage 's old play “Pilgrims from Mecca” into the libretto of the opera “Unexpected Encounter” ( French La rencontre imprévue ), which was staged on January 7, 1764 in the Vienna Burgtheater and became one of the most successful and sought-after works of Gluck; however, this opera was almost always staged with a translated into German and / or significantly modified libretto, and the original version of Duncour was reconstructed and staged only in 1990.

Subsequently, Dankur worked in 1765 - 1766 . in the Brussels theater La Monnet , then in The Hague and Berlin, and after 1771 - in secondary Parisian theaters. On his account - the libretto to a number of operas by Jean Joseph Rodolf , Henri Joseph Rigel and other second-line composers.