François Lay, better known under the stage name Lays His surname is also written as Laï, Laïs or Laÿs, French orthography of the period being rather unstable. According to Quéruel (p. 21), the stage name originally chosen by the singer, "M. Laÿs" (no doubt pronounced 'la-ìs' and whose diaeresis would eventually be dropped), was intended to avoid puns on his original surname, pronounced 'la-ì' in Occitan but running the risk of being interpreted differently by French-speakers, probably as 'lè' , the same as the word "laid" (ugly). (14 February 1758 – 30 March 1831The date 27 March is attested in the biography by Anne Quéruel. On the other hand, Fétis, Pitou and Elizabeth Forbes give the date of his death as 30 March.), was a French baritone and tenor opera singer. Originally destined for a career in the church, Lays was recruited by the Paris Opéra in 1779. He soon became a leading member of the company, in spite of quarrels with the management. Lays enthusiastically welcomed the French Revolution and became involved in politics with the encouragement of his friend Bertrand Barère. Barère's downfall led to Lays being imprisoned briefly, but he soon won back the public and secured the patronage of Napoleon, at whose coronation and second wedding he sang. This association with the Emperor caused him trouble when the Bourbon monarchy was restored and Lays's final years were darkened by disputes over his pension, mounting debts, the death of his only son and his wife's illness. After a career spanning more than four decades, he died in poverty.
Lays was famous for the beauty of his voice. One of the Opéra's most popular artistes, he enjoyed his greatest success singing comic roles, such as Anacreon in Grétry's Anacréon chez Polycrate (1797) and the bailiff in Lebrun's Le rossignol (1816).
Biography
Youth and education Lays was born in the village of La Barthe-de-Neste in the region of Bigorre in what was then Gascony. His family intended him for a career in the Church at the Sanctuary of Notre-Dame-de-Garaison (Monléon-Magnoac), where he stayed until he was 17, receiving a solid musical education as a chorister and developing a remarkable baritenor voice. He was transferred to Auch for a short while to study philosophy and work as a teacher before returning to Garaison to study theology.Fétis, op.cit. In 1778, the canons of the convent gave Lays a grant to study for a doctorate in theology in Toulouse. Lays was now determined to abandon a career in the Church and became increasingly active as a singer, joining the cathedral choir and accepting invitations to perform at local salons. In Toulouse, Lays formed a lifelong friendship with the young lawyer Bertrand Barère, the future French Revolutionary politician and member of the Committee of Public Safety. Barère introduced Lays to the city's Enlightenment circles. On Easter Sunday 1779, Lays was singing the liturgy in the cathedral when he was heard by the Intendant Royal of Languedoc. Following the recruitment practice then used by Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opéra), the Intendant decided to issue Lays with a royal ordinance (equivalent to a lettre de cachet) obliging him to travel to Paris for an audition.Quéruel, p. 18 ff.
Early career Lays was immediately enrolled in the company as one of the lower male voices (known in France at the time as basse-tailles) and began a rapid ascent up the Opéra career ladder. He was first introduced to the Parisian public on 10 October 1779, singing the aria "Sous les lois de l'hymen" by Pierre Montan Berton to great applause (it had been inserted into the acte de ballet La Provençale by Jean-Joseph Mouret and Pierre-Joseph CandeilleQuéruel, p. 7. La Provençale was an entrée added in 1722 by Jean-Joseph Mouret to his opéra-ballet Les Festes de Thalie. It remained popular throughout the 18th century. In 1778 most of the entrée was set to new music by Candeille to be given as part of a performance of "fragments" (also called "spectacles coupés") which were very common in the latter half of the 18th century, or as an intermezzo to the opere buffe by Italian composers the Académie Royale de Musique was staging at the time.). He made his official debut on the 31st of the same month, playing Théophile in a revival of "Théodore", the second entrée from Étienne-Joseph Floquet's L'union de l'amour et des arts.Jullien, pp. 90–91. Having stepped in as a substitute in the role of Oreste in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride,Castil-Blaze, L'Académie Royale de Musique (3e époque – 6e article), "Revue de Paris", New series, Year 1837, 37th volume, p. 23 (accessible for free online at Google Books). in 1780 he was given the first new roles of his career: a follower of Morpheus in Piccinni's Atys; the male protagonist in the unsuccessful acte de ballet Laure et Pétrarque by Candeille;George Grove, Lays [Lai, Laïs, Lay], François, in Stanley Sadie (ed.), John Tyrrell (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2ª ed., Oxford University Press, 2001, . and the bailiff in Floquet's Le seigneur bienfaisant, Lays's first big success.Fétis, op.cit.; Pitou, p. 493 (article: Le Seigneur bienfaisant). Fétis writes that the role was specifically composed with Lays in mind, whereas the 1781 libretto ascribes the character to another basse-taille of the company, M. Durand (Le Seigneur bienfaisant, Opéra, composé des actes du Pressoir ou des Fètes de l'Automne, de l'Incendie, et du Bal, Paris, aux dépens de l'Académie, 1881, p. 8, accessible online at Google Books). The review published by the "Mercure de France" reports that Lays did in fact appear at the premiere and the audience did not appreciate the long arietta he sung: his performance, however, was much praised by the reviewer ("Mercure de France", 30 December 1780, pp. 222–223, accessible online at Google Books). Between 1780 and 1791, he was a member of two of the main musical institutions at court, the Concerts de la reine (the Queen's concerts) and the King's Grand Couvert,Literally meaning 'a gala dinner', the term refers to the Versailles custom of performing music on the occasions when the royal couple had dinner in public in the antechamber of the Grand Couvert. The custom had been introduced by Marie Antoinette who wished to relieve the boredom of the public dinner ceremonial (cf. Chateau de Versailles website). soon becoming a favourite of the royal couple, and in particular of Marie Antoinette.Quéruel, Tableau chronologique, pp. 165–171.
His early career at the Opéra was quite turbulent. The institution at the time was seething with discontent: the artistes resented the fact their wages were only a third of those of the actors of the Comédie-Française and the Comédie-Italienne; moreover, their pay was only partly fixed and permanent, the rest being linked to how frequently they appeared on stage and the size of their roles. The rebellious Lays soon became embroiled in a heated confrontation with the management, behaving almost like a modern union agitator, with the support of two singers who had joined the company around the same time, the haute-contre Sources traditionally report only the initial letter (J.) of this singer's name; full details, however, can be found in "Organico dei fratelli a talento della Loggia parigina di Saint-Jean d'Écosse du Contrat Social (1773–89)" (list of the members of this Masonic lodge), reported as an Appendix in Zeffiro Ciuffoletti and Sergio Moravia (eds), La Massoneria. La storia, gli uomini, le idee, Milan, Mondadori, 2004, . and the bass Auguste-Athanase Chéron (1760–1829). In June 1781, fire destroyed the second hall of the Palais Royal, the home of the theatre, causing performances to be suspended. This left the singers with only their meagre basic salaries, so the three decided to remedy the situation by accepting engagements elsewhere, even though they were prohibited by law from doing so as salaried artistes of the Académie Royale de Musique. Rousseau alone managed to travel to Brussels surreptitiously and appear at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, then the second most important French-speaking theatre in the world. Lays, however, was arrested on the evening of 20 August 1781, the day before he was due to set off, and spent ten days in prison.Prison (or the threat of prison) was a fairly common method of bringing the Opéra's intractable artistes to heel. In 1771, for instance, the principal tenor Joseph Legros, believing the role he had been allotted in La Borde's pastorale La Cinquantaine was supremely silly and tasteless, initially refused outright to perform it. However, according to an indignant Mathieu-François Pidansat de Mairobert, he eventually had to bow to La Borde's threat of making him spend a good fifty days in For-l'Évêque prison (Louis Petit de Bachaumont et al., Mémoires secrets..., London, Adamson, 1784, 5th tome, p. 296, accessible online at Google Books). Things went even worse for his successor Étienne Lainez. So deep was his loathing for the title role of Salieri's Tarare (1787), that the Opéra's musical director, Louis-Joseph Francœur, was only able to persuade him to appear in the sixth performance of the opera by informing him he had a warrant for the singer's arrest in his pocket. This was not enough, however, to prevent Lainez from being imprisoned on 25 November after he had again repeatedly refused to assume the hated role of Tarare (Lajarte, p. 358). He was provisionally released on the 30th because he was indispensable for filling the haute-contre role of Cynire in a revival of Gluck's Echo et NarcisseAccording to Quéruel, in 1781 Lays was going to take the role that had been created two years before by Henri Larrivée, the company's leading bass-baritone. In fact, Larrivée had not appeared in the premiere of Echo et Narcisse, where there are no bass-baritone leads, and the role of Cynire had been performed by the principal haute-contre Joseph Legros. The versatile Lays was probably just covering for his comrade Rousseau during the emergency created by latter's escape abroad. A hand-written score kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France shows some changes made to the part of Cynire which are expressly designated "pour Lays" (for Lays): like the rest of the part, they are notated in the alto clef (C-clef on the third line) which was customarily used for the haute-contre voice. in the small hall of the Menus-Plaisirs which acted as a substitute for the theatre which had burned down. His enormous popularity with the public, with an encore of the main aria and several curtain-calls, made it practically impossible to send him back to prison, although he was forced to sign a solemn undertaking that he would not leave Paris without the express permission of his superiors.Quèruel, Chapter 2, Le rebelle – 1779–1788, pp. 25–49 (passim)