André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry

Knight of the Légion d'Honneur

André Grétry was born in Liège on February 8, 1741. His father was a violinist, and he studied music at the collegiate church of Saint-Denis in Liège. He was also a frequent visitor to the Italian Comedy on the banks of the Meuse.

Thanks to a grant from the Fondation Darchis, the young Grétry left for Rome in 1761, where he spent five years perfecting his training under the wing of Padre Martini, the future mentor of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He also enjoyed his first successes there.

After a detour to Geneva, where he was encouraged by Voltaire, Gretry moved to Paris. The capital gave him a triumph in 1768 with Le Huron, a comic opera. The genre was new at the time, and Grétry succeeded in surpassing his predecessors by adapting it to the French language and the sensibilities of the time. In the years that followed, he produced a number of major works: Zémire et Azor (1771), Richard coeur de Lion (1784), in which the simplicity of his melodic line and his humor enabled him to escape the mawkish sentimentality that dominated French lyric music at the end of the 18th century.

His output was abundant, both in opéras-comiques (some forty) and in operas proper (some fifteen, including La Double Epreuve ou Colinette and La Caravane du Caire, from which one of the most popular military settings of the Grande Armée is taken), and sometimes testifies to his interest in the new trends emerging across the Rhine (Andromaque, 1780). However, he always remained faithful to his principles, combining arias in which expression and psychological characterization of the character take precedence over all other considerations, with orchestration that is sometimes considered poor, but in fact perfectly adapted to the needs of the work.

During the French Revolution, the composer's popularity was initially eclipsed, before returning to its full glory during the Directoire period. In 1795, he was appointed one of five inspectors at the Conservatoire (along with François-Joseph Gossé, known as Gossec, Etienne Méhul, Jean-François Lesueur and Luigi Cherubini). During this period, he wrote a few revolutionary hymns in keeping with the fashion of the day, then slowed down his compositional pace and retired to devote himself above all to writing. By this time, his natural optimism had faded behind a melancholy linked to his domestic misfortunes (the death of his daughters) and the harshness of the times.

He had already published the first volume of his Mémoires in 1789. The last two were published in 1797. In 1801, he also published De la vérité. Ce que nous fûmes, ce que nous sommes, ce que nous devrions être... les Réflexions solitaires, written during his retreat at Montmorency, in the hermitage owned by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1798, were published after his death.

During these last years, he received a pension of 4,000 francs from Napoleon, and was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur on May 19, 1802.

The old musician died on September 24, 1813 in Montmorency. His funeral was the occasion for a grandiose event. His body was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, 11th division; his heart, after a long legal battle to have his last wishes respected, was transferred to Liège, where it is kept opposite the Opéra.

Grétry was nicknamed by Méhul the Molière of lyrical music.

Freemasonry: Although a lodge of the Grand Orient of Belgium in Liège bears his name, there is no evidence that Grétry was himself a Freemason.

Banknotes: In 1980, the National Bank of Belgium issued a 1000-franc banknote   bearing Grétry's image.

Various events commemorated the two hundredth anniversary of his death in 2013:

1. The exhibition De l'opéra comique à l'ermitage de Jean-Jacques Rousseau was held until November 17 in Montmorency at the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Museum.
2. The exhibition Grétry le magnifique remained open from September 20 to November 24 at the Verviers Museum of Fine Arts and Ceramics.