page_title: Albert Dubosq
section_title: The opera scenographer
hierarchical_section_title: Albert Dubosq / Career / The opera scenographer
caption_attribution_description: English: Dubosq's scale-model for Wagner's "Le crépuscule des dieux" (Opéra, Paris, 1908), Act III, scene 1
context_page_description: Albert Émile Clément Dubosq is one of the most prolific Belgian scenographers of the Belle Époque. Between 1890 and 1925 Dubosq decorated 446 theatrical entertainments of virtually every possible kind: ballet, circus, drama, opera, operetta, pantomime, revue, and vaudeville. Dubosq is furthermore one of the few scenic painters of his generation to have left a substantial sample of his art, namely twenty-one complete sets. Comprising Europe's largest holding of historical decors, the hundreds of flats and drops of the ‘Dubosq’ collection have survived at the Schouwburg of Kortrijk since 1920.
context_section_description: Immediately upon their accession to the directorshop of the Théâtre de la Monnaie, on 1 June 1900, Maurice Kufferath and Guillaume Guidé appointed Dubosq the Monnaie's second peintre-décorateur attitré, next to Devis and Lynen. Dubosq's first contribution to the Monnaie was the “Quartier Latin” set for Giacomo Puccini’s La (vie de) bohème, Act II. Premiered on 25 October 1900 under the supervision of the composer and publisher Tito Ricordi, this production enjoyed thirty performances in its first run alone and would keep the stage until 1949. Significantly, Puccini and Riccordi were so enthralled by Dubosq’s effort that they had it photographed and incorporated in Riccardo Salvadori’s new design for Act II of Puccini’s masterpiece.
  After La Bohème, Dubosq received a string of commissions from the Monnaie:
  the world premieres of Vincent d’Indy’s L’Étranger (7 January 1903), Albert Dupuis’ Jean Michel (3 March 1903), Ernest Chausson’s Le roi Arthus (30 November 1903), and Dupuis’ Martille (3 March 1905)
  the Belgian premieres of Charpentier’s Louise (8 February 1901), Wagner’s Le crépuscule des dieux (Götterdämmerung, 24 December 1901, featuring the earliest use of the cyclorama in Belgium and closing the first complete Ring cycle outside Germany), Puccini’s Tosca (2 April 1904), Massenet’s Le jongleur de Notre-Dame (25 November 1904) and Ariane (12 November 1907), Messager’s Madame Chrysanthème (9 November 1906), and Gailhard’s Amaryllis (8 February 1907)
  complete make-overs of Bizet’s Carmen (19 November 1902), Gounod’s Faust (3 November 1904; attended by King Leopold II), Gluck’s Alceste (14 December 1904) and Armide (7 November 1905), and Berlioz’ La damnation de Faust (adaptation by Raoul Gunsbourg, 21 February 1906) and Les Troyens (26 December 1906)
  Several of this stagings were created by Dubosq in close collaboration with the stage director Charles De Beer and costume designer (and symbolist painter) Fernand Khnopff. Dubosq's activity at la Monnaie paved the way to new commissions from other opera houses, such as the Théâtre Royal of Liège (Louise, 1902), the Grand-Théâtre of Lyon (Salammbô, 1903; Le crépuscule des dieux, 1904), the Théâtre Royal (Français) of Antwerp (thirty-six productions, starting with Le jongleur de Notre-Dame in 1905 and ending with Aida in 1924), the Théâtre Royal of Ostend (a.o. Lakmé, 1905), the Vlaamse Opera of Antwerp (starting with the theater's inaugural production of Blockx’ De herbergprinses, 1907), and the Grand Théâtre of Ghent (a.o. Carmen, 1912). The highlight of Dubosq's career was no doubt the staging of Götterdämmerung at the Parisian Académie Nationale de Musique (Palais Garnier, 23 October 1908), to which the artist contributed three magnificent sets—with resident set designers Eugène Carpezat and Marcel Jambon furnishing (only) one each.
caption: Dubosq's scale-model for Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Opéra, Paris, 1908), Act III, scene 1. Bibliothèque-Musée de l’Opéra, Paris.
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