By Laure Schnapper
Born into an illustrious Italian family of bankers based in Constantinople, Isaac de Camondo inherited the family bank with his cousin Moïse, as well as being an art collector, patron and composer. In 1867, he moved to Paris with his entire family; his father Abraham built an hotel at 61 rue de Monceau, next to his brother Nissim’s, on the site of today’s Musée Camondo.
Passionate about art and music, Isaac took piano lessons with Henri Ravina (1818-1906) and composition lessons with Gaston Salvayre (1847-1907), who won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1872 and with whom he remained friends until his death.
From the age of 30, Camondo had been collecting works of art, whose successive bequests have enriched various departments of the Musée du Louvre; his Impressionist paintings in particular make up the main collection of the Musée d’Orsay, from Manet’s Fifre to Degas’ danseuses, not forgetting the paintings in the Monet room.
Between 1870 and 1889, Camondo published some fifteen piano pieces, mainly polkas and waltzes, as well as two melodies, La chanson du berger and Laisseras-tu mignonne, based on lyrics by his friend Paul Choudens. But as an ardent Wagnerian – he went to Bayreuth as soon as the theater opened in 1876, then returned in 1882 with Léo Delibes (1836-1891) and Gaston Salvayre to attend the premiere of Parsifal – he sought a new path and remained silent from 1889 to 1903.
During these 14 years, he did not publish, but devoted himself to patronage: from 1898, he became the main sponsor (for around 10% of the capital) of the Opéra-Comique, directed by his friend Albert Carré, and, from 1901, of the Opéra. He also enabled Gabriel Astruc (1864-1938), son of Rabbi Aristide Astruc, to create the Société musicale – a publishing house and concert agency – in 1904, with which he was financially associated. In 1908, he became a shareholder in the Société du théâtre des Champs-Élysées, but his death prevented him from attending the theatre’s inauguration in 1913.
The premiere of Debussy’s Pelleas et Mélisande at the Opéra-Comique in 1902 may well have prompted him to return to composing; he then worked actively, adopting a resolutely modern, even experimental, harmonic language. Nearly 80 works were published by Astruc, mostly for string quartet or orchestra. He presented them at a concert he organized at Salle Pleyel on March 10, 1904, with Lazare-Lévy at the piano and Camille Chevillard, director of the Lamoureux concerts, conducting. In April 1906, he performed the “musical novel” Le Clown at the Nouveau-théâtre, to a libretto by Victor Capoul – whose recitative style is reminiscent of Pelleas. The work was revived at the Opéra-Comique in June 1908, as well as in Marseille, Vichy, Antwerp and Cologne between 1909 and 1912.
The resumption of composing did not prevent him from pursuing his patronage activities: in 1904 he founded the Société des artistes et amis de l’Opéra, intended to provide financial support for the Association philanthropique de secours mutuel des artistes de l’Opéra, which was no longer able to ensure a decent retirement for its members.
He also took an active part in musical life: after joining the Société française des amis de la musique in 1909, whose aim was to propagate the taste and study of music and enable poor artists to have their music performed, he helped Countess Greffulhe, president of the Société des grandes auditions musicales de France, to sponsor the Ballets Russes season in 1910, and supported the Société musicale indépendante (SMI). Sharing his life with Lucie Berthet, a soprano at the Opéra, Camondo was always ready to help musicians, including Wanda Landowska, who had arrived in Paris in 1900, and the young Lazare-Lévy. He died suddenly in 1911 in his apartment, just as his opera Le clown was scheduled to be performed in Cologne the year after.
