Michel Carré

Michel Carré (20 October 1821, Besançon – 27 June 1872, Argenteuil) was a prolific French librettist.He went to Paris in 1840 intending to become a painter but took up writing instead. He wrote verse and plays before turning to writing libretti. He wrote the text for Charles Gounods Mireille (1864) on his own, and collaborated with Eugène Cormon on Bizets Les pêcheurs de perles. However, the majority of his libretti were completed in tandem with Jules Barbier, with whom he wrote the libretti for numerous operas, including Camille Saint-Saënss Le timbre dargent (libretto written in 1864, first performed in 1877), Gounods Faust (1859), Roméo et Juliette (1867), and Offenbachs Les contes dHoffmann (1881). As with the other libretti by Barbier and himself, these were adaptations of existing literary masterworks.His son, Michel-Antoine (1865–1945), followed in his fathers footsteps, also writing libretti, and later directing silent films. His nephew Albert Carré (1852–1938) also wrote libretti.

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