Marmontel, And Laborde. Annette And Lubin, 1762. Superb Morocco Binding With Gilt Lace.

Annette and Lubin. Pastoral set to music by Monsieur DLB with separate parts. The words are by M. Marmontel. Engraved by Mlle Vendome, at Mr. Moria's. In Paris, at Mr. Moria's, Music Master at the Comédie Françoise, and at the usual addresses for Music. With approval. Undated, circa 1762. One large quarto volume (the size of a small folio: 36.5 x 26 cm), full olive morocco, wide gilt tooling framing the covers, smooth spine decorated, red morocco title label, double gilt fillet along the edges, inner dentelle, pink moiré endpapers. Contemporary binding, attributable to a great Parisian bookbinder. The work is entirely engraved: title page and 113 pages of music. The leaves are folded in four (two folds, 4 leaves). Leaves made in Holland. Watermark: large fleur-de-lis within a crowned shield, accompanied at the base by the letters VDL (for Van der Ley, see Gaudriault 4322, p. 310 and pl. 150). Bookplate on morocco leather by Michel Wittock. Magnificent binding, covering the famous Pastorale by Jean-François Marmontel, set to music by Jean-Benjamin de Laborde. All the delicacy of the 18th century! "The 18th century became madly enamored with the story of Annette and Lubin, to the point that it became one of the most popular living legends of the pre-revolutionary era. The incestuous love of two orphaned and impoverished cousins who loved each other in all innocence despite the condemnations of their neighbors became the darling of the generation of readers of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and admirers of Jean-Honoré Fragonard." They were first recounted in a moral tale by Jean-François Marmontel, published in 1761. But soon, two characters from the town of Spa (south of Liège) came to be seen as having inspired the writer and as the living embodiments of what had initially been only a figment of the imagination. Represented in paintings, reproduced as porcelain figurines and engravings, and portrayed as characters in plays and comic operas, the myth grew to such proportions that those with a sensitive soul made pilgrimages to the town known for its thermal waters to climb "Annette and Lubin's Hill." It was in the form of a comic opera, whose subtitle "pastoral" evokes the love between shepherdesses and shepherds, that the story adopted its most popular form. Marmontel was the first (1762) to adapt his tale for this genre and for a private theater. This circumstance explains the numerous ambiguities in the text, a summary of which we present; a text halfway between pastoral and parade, which would not have been appropriate for the stage of the Comédie Italienne due to its potentially risqué content left to the actors' interpretation. A text that gives considerable importance to music, that of the tax farmer Jean-Benjamin de Laborde, and lies somewhere between spoken and lyrical theatre. (Théâtre du Matin company)