Ludovic Halévy

Ludovic Halévy was a nephew of the composer Fromental Halévy, whose daughter Geneviève married Bizet, and wrote for the stage while a ministry clerk. With Henri Meilhac he formed the Second Empire's defining librettist partnership, supplying Offenbach with La belle Hélène, La Vie parisienne, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein and La Périchole, and Bizet with Carmen. Their comedies caught the regime's tone so closely that its fall in 1870 left them period pieces, though the partnership ran on into the 1880s. His novel L'Abbé Constantin was among the century's best-selling French books; he entered the Académie française in 1884.