1810–1889 · France · Romantic
Louise Françoise Puget, known as Loïsa Puget, was a French composer who lived from 1810 to 1889. She wrote romances and songs for voice, performed them in salons and also sang at concerts. Three of her songs with piano accompaniment are on this site.
Loïsa Puget was born in Paris in February 1810; her full first names were Louise Françoise. Her mother, Jeanne-Françoise Stassny, was a singer and taught the girl music herself in her childhood.
She attended the same school as George Sand. Adolphe Adam taught her composition and orchestration. Once her studies were over, she began to write her own music and perform it in salons.
Loïsa became famous for her romances and chansonnettes. From 1830 she gave them at concerts and in salons. She was a singer as well as a composer, and she appeared in concerts across France.
Her songs were not confined to fashionable drawing rooms. They were sung in convents and girls' boarding schools, and her popular pieces were also staged in theatres. They were published, and performers of the day sang them in concert.
The years from 1830 to 1845 were her most productive. In that time she wrote the music for more than 300 songs. Many appeared in editions with guitar, some prepared by noted guitarists such as Matteo Carcassi.
Loïsa's success came between 1830 and 1845 and reached beyond France: her works were known in the United States, England and Germany. In Germany her larger pieces were translated.
Her romances also drew in other composers. Henri Bertini, Adolphe Le Carpentier, Carl Czerny, Henri Herz, Franz Hünten, Friedrich Kalkbrenner and Henri Rosellen made virtuoso keyboard arrangements of them. Loïsa's best-loved song, À la grâce de Dieu, became the basis of a melodrama that Gustave Lemoine and Adolphe d'Ennery wrote in 1841, and that melodrama gave Donizetti the idea for Linda di Chamounix.
In 1845 Loïsa married the lyricist Gustave Lemoine (1802–1885). He was a playwright and wrote the words to her romances, of which she composed over three hundred.
Loïsa was a friend of George Sand. Sand's novel Leone Leoni inspired her to write a romance of the same title.
In 1836 the Opéra-Comique staged Loïsa's only opéra-comique, the one-act Le Mauvais Œil. The libretto was by Eugène Scribe and her husband Gustave Lemoine.
Hector Berlioz attended a performance and, in the same year, 1836, published a harsh article in the Paris Revue et gazette musicale. He pointed out that Loïsa, skilled at romances, had reused them in the opera. He faulted her for a lack of originality and for her choice of instruments.
In 1851, when the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers (SACEM) was being set up, Loïsa became its first woman member. In the 1850s she ran into financial difficulties.
She moved to Pau. Her last album appeared in 1852, and in 1869 the Gymnase theatre staged her operetta La Veilleuse, ou les Nuits de Milady. Loïsa Puget died in Pau in October 1889 and was buried with her husband in the town cemetery.
Loïsa Puget is known above all for her romances and chansonnettes: she wrote more than 300 songs. They were sung in salons and concerts, in boarding schools and convents, and were issued in print. Many also came out in guitar versions. She was regarded as the first star of French variety music.
Among her stage works are her sole one-act opéra-comique, Le Mauvais Œil, staged in 1836, and the operetta La Veilleuse, ou les Nuits de Milady of 1869. There are also Trois Quadrilles de Contredanses for piano on themes from Le Mauvais Œil. Another work listed is La chanson du charbonnier, ou blanc et noir, from 1839.
Her romances drew in other composers: Czerny, Herz, Kalkbrenner and others made keyboard arrangements on their themes. A melodrama built on the song À la grâce de Dieu then gave Donizetti his idea for Linda di Chamounix.
The site has three editions for voice and piano, all at an upper-intermediate level: Adieu, cousine, La dot d’Auvergne and Le bon curé patience. They suit a singer and accompanist who already read music with confidence and want to meet French salon repertoire of the early nineteenth century.