Perrin, Pierre
Perrin, Pierre
Perrin, Pierre , French poet; b. Lyons, c. 1620; d. Paris, April 25, 1675. He took the title of Abbé, and served as introducteur des ambassadeurs for Gaston d’Orléans (1648–60). Having written the texts to 2 of Cambert’s pastorals—Pastorale d’lssy and Ariane, ou Le manage de Bacchus—he obtained the privilege to organize académies d’opéra in 1669. The Paris academy was inaugurated with the Perrin-Cambert collaboration Pomone (March 3, 1671), which ran for 146 performances. However, his unscrupulous business managers took flight with the proceeds, leaving Perrin to spend time in a debtors’ prison (1671); later that year he sold part of his privilege to the composer Sablières and his librettist Henri Guichard, and then turned over the full privilege to Lully in 1672 in return for a pension.
Bibliography
A. Pougin, Les Vrais Créateurs de l’opéra français, P. et Cambert (Paris, 1881); L. Auld, The Lyric Art of P. P., Founder of French Opera (3 vols., Henryville, Pa., 1986).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire