Louis Hurtaut Dancourt

Louis Hurtaut, known as Dancourt (also spelt Heurtaux), was a French librettist, playwright and actor born in Paris in 1725 and died in the same city in 1801. He did not manage to establish himself as an actor in the capital, but his work is of interest for its role in opéra comique and for the circulation of his libretti in European theatres in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Much of his career took place outside Paris. He performed in the provinces, in cities such as Rennes, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Rouen, and on foreign stages such as Bayreuth, Munich, Berlin and Brussels. While in Berlin, shortly after 1755, he wrote the libretto of the divertimento Le triple horoscope, with music by Gaultier. With a warm recommendation from Favart, he joined the French company in Vienna in 1762.

During the 1763–1764 season he wrote the libretto of La rencontre imprévue, ou Les pèlerins de la Mecque, set by Gluck and premiered in 1764. The work derived from a piece by Lesage and D'Orneval. Dancourt reworked it in Brussels (1765), in Bordeaux as Ali et Rezia (1766) and in Paris as Les fous de Médine (1790), with music arranged by Solié. Carl Friberth adapted it into Italian, and that version inspired Haydn's L'incontro improvviso of 1775.

His output includes many other libretti. The pastoral Scamandre, with music by Rozière, Dugué and the young Feyseau, was staged in Bordeaux in 1766. He also collaborated with Deshayes, Lebrun, Claude Le Petit, Rigel, Rodolphe and Trial, on titles such as Le faux serment, L'art d'aimer, Le combat nocturne or Ariane, fille de Minos.

A defender of the exaggerated comedy of the authors of the Théâtres de la Foire, Dancourt sustained opéra comique with vaudevilles and, in his comédies mêlées d'ariettes and opéras comiques, opposed the influence of the bourgeois and sentimental dramas of his day. His importance lies above all in his link with French opéra comique and in the European journey of his libretti, whose echo in Gluck and Haydn shows how far these works circulated beyond France.