BALZAC (Honoré de). Autograph letter signed... - Lot 49 - Osenat

BALZAC (Honoré de). Autograph letter signed "de Balzac" [to the director of the Odéon theater, Jean-Baptiste Violet d'Épagny]. [Passy], "Tuesday morning" [28 December 1841]. One p. in-8 on a mitered bifeuillet mounted on a sheet of strong paper. "My dear director, under the terms of our agreements, I am ready to read, I have chosen tomorrow, Wednesday, and I have told your stage manager the names of the actors to whom I entrust our play. I have done your job a little, I have conquered Madame Dorval who will enrich you, I will bring her myself. Find here, my dear d'Epagny, a thousand friendships, I gave you the proof of our old acquaintance by choosing you THE RESOURCES OF QUINOLA, I will wait for the return in our relations and I am entitled to a lot of zeal... Not having found you, I entrust this letter to M. Valmore [Prosper Lanchantin known as Prosper Valmore, husband of the poetess Marceline Desbordes-Valmore]... " WITH QUINOLA'S RESOURCES, HONORE DE BALZAC THOUGHT HE HAD WRITTEN HIS GREAT COMEDY, in the tradition of The Misanthrope and The Marriage of Figaro. He proposed it to the Odéon theater, and tried to secure the collaboration of Marie Dorval, but the reading of the play in her presence on December 29, 1841 was incomplete, and the actress did not follow up. Honoré de Balzac struggled to complete and correct the text, and the play was premiered on March 19, 1842, under difficult conditions due to the disastrous choices made by the author, who refused the claque, refused preferential seats to journalists and friends, and sold tickets at too high a price. It was a semi-failure. Provenance: Arthur Meyer; then "ACR" (stamp).