page_title: Émilie Ambre
section_title: American tours and a "misalliance"
hierarchical_section_title: Émilie Ambre / American tours and a "misalliance"
caption_attribution_description: English: French soprano Émilie Ambre in the title role of Aida at the Paris Opera
context_page_description: Émilie Gabrielle Adèle Ambre was a French opera singer who performed leading soprano roles in Europe and North America and later became a singing teacher. Born in French Algeria and trained at the Marseilles Conservatory, she was for several years the mistress of William III of the Netherlands. She had a son Robert by her next lover Gaston de Beauplan, but the relationship eventually foundered after their return from the financially disastrous 1880–1881 American tour de Beauplan had organized to showcase her talents. Following her retirement from the stage in 1890, Ambre opened a singing school in Paris with the composer Emile Bouichère and married him in 1894. As a singer, she was particularly known for her performances as Violetta, Manon, and Aida, but is primarily remembered today as the subject of Édouard Manet's portrait of her as Carmen.
context_section_description: Colonel Mapleson, the impresario of Her Majesty's Theatre, recruited Ambre for his troupe's American tour which ran from November 1879 to March 1880. She appeared in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, and Cleveland with the company, reprising her roles in La traviata and Aida and also singing the title role in Carmen and Valentine in Les Huguenots. She was accompanied on the tour by her lover Gaston de Beauplan (1849-1890). Gaston de Beauplan, whose full name was Amédée Gaston Ludovic Rousseau de Beauplan, was the son of Arthur de Beauplan and the grandson of Amédée de Beauplan, both of whom were playwrights and composers active in the musical and theatrical life of Paris. Through the intervention of Jules Simon, the French Interior Minister, he was employed as a functionary in the Interior Ministry and later promoted to the post of Director of Theatre Companies. However, his family considered him an irresponsible spendthrift and strongly disapproved of his "misalliance" with Ambre. At one point they brought an unsuccessful court case to have him declared mentally incompetent.
  A few months after their return from the Mapleson tour, de Beauplan conceived the idea of forming his own French opera troupe with Ambre as its star soprano. They assembled a complete opera company consisting of 169 people—singers, actors, supernumeraries, a chorus, orchestra, corps de ballet, seamstresses, hairdressers, and stagehands—and set off for America in October 1880. The tour began with a successful repertory season in New Orleans. However, with severe rainstorms and flooding and competition from Sarah Bernhardt's theatre troupe who were also performing there, the box office receipts declined considerably by February 1881. After leaving New Orleans, the troupe toured to Cincinnati, Chicago, and Philadelphia, but the box office receipts in those cities did not even cover their expenses. By the time they had reached New York in May 1881, the five main singers refused to perform unless they were paid their back wages. The company collapsed. Ambre pawned some of her jewels to pay the most pressing debts and departed for France accompanied by the troupe's leading tenor, Gabriel Tournié. The hapless de Beauplan was left behind to sort out the repatriation of the company's remaining members.
  The New York press had portrayed her precipitous departure with Tournié, whose wife also sang with the company, as an "elopement". On her return to France, Ambre gave a lengthy interview to the Parisian journalist Louis Besson in Le Voleur. In the interview, which was also covered in the American press, she denied all rumours of an elopement and said that Tournie and his wife were now together in France. Nevertheless, she claimed that the intense publicity surrounding the faux scandal had prompted Mapleson to offer her a further engagement with his company. She also told Besson that she had no interest in singing in the French provinces and was considering a tour in Italy. As for de Beauplan, she said that after sorting out the company's problems in New York, he would be leaving for Colorado "to work in the mines". Instead, he returned to France and by October 1881 Ambre and de Beauplan were together at her house in Meudon.
caption: Ambre as Aida, Paris 1878
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