Henri Meilhac

Henri Meilhac began as a bookshop clerk and a caricaturist for the comic press before writing for the stage. With Ludovic Halévy he produced some fifty pieces, among them the Offenbach operettas that defined the Second Empire's idea of itself and, for Bizet, Carmen, which softens Mérimée's novella considerably and adds Micaëla, who is not in it at all. Meilhac brought the dialogue and the comic invention to the partnership, Halévy the structure. He also wrote Manon for Massenet, with Philippe Gille, and was elected to the Académie française in 1888.