Comic Opera, Theatre & Romanticism

The Christian Collin Gallery is pleased to present an exceptional set of prints about the theatre and musical scene between 1750 and 1850.

T. Bertrand, Tommaso Antonio Visentini, known as Thomassin, actor of the Italian-Comedy, etching, after Maurice Quentin de la Tour, 1750 – 1790.

Collected by a fancier at the beginning of the 20th century, this ancient collection was to illustrate an iconographic history of the Opéra Comique, through portraits of its singers, Opera singers, composers, performers and librettists.

Amongst others, famous Romanticism figures can be found here: Rossini, Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Auber, Paganini, Cherubini, la Malibran -…According to Liszt, paris was, at one time,  “the intellectual center of the world (…) the burning hearth that illuminates and consumes fame of any kind” or according to Chopin, “Paris was as a mermaid, muse and jellyfish”.
Their portraits were immortalized and diffused in Europe by the lithographs of Devéria, Maurin, Grevedon, Belliard, Vigneron.
Gathered together in this ensemble,  constituting a precious and important testimony of this period.

The ensemble can be seen in the store and on the gallery website: http://www.collin-estampes.fr/?idr=136&lang=fr

Pierre-Roche Vigneron, Mme Malibran Garcia, lithographie.