Jules Lefort

Jules Lefort (27 January 1822 – 7 September 1898), was a French lyrical singer of the Victorian era who in a career that spanned three decades regularly sang in the salons of wealthy and aristocratic patrons and in fashionable concert rooms both in Paris and London and across Europe. During his early singing career he was a tenor and a baritone but by the time of his later career in 1871 his voice had lowered to bass. Early life Jules François René Lefort was born in Paris in 1822, the son of Jean François Hubert Lefort, a merchant, and Elisabeth Adèle née Dezedde. The family originated from Laboissière-en-Thelle, a commune in the Oise department in northern France. During much of his career Lefort sang mainly in Parisian salons, occasionally venturing further afield to venues across Europe and to London and the British provinces. Kurt Gänzl, the writer on musical theatre, has described him as, "a very clever artist, able to interpret the romances and songs of his age with delicacy and point, with intelligence and expression, in a manner which was highly effective... time and again, he was hailed as the outstanding male singer of romances and ballads in Paris and in London." There is some uncertainty about his vocal range at this stage in his career; his first press notice, in a short article about the Paris Opéra in January 1842 in the Parisian newspaper Les Coulisses, described the 19 year-old Lefort as a new baritone "with a beautiful voice" who, with proper training, would be able to sing tenor. Gänzl believes he was a light baritone. In the next few years he was a regular on the concert platform. By 1846 the musical press was calling him the 'baryton en vogue’, and by November 1846 he was a leading player in the ‘opéra de salon’ - performing operas and musical comedies privately in the homes of aristocrats and the rich. Musical career He made his début at the Paris Opéra in 1848 singing the baritone role of Lord Enrico Ashton in Lucie de Lammermoor, and sang don Fadrique in Jeanne la Folle there in the same year. After a number of public performances in Paris, Orléans and Rouen he made his first appearance in London in June 1850 in a concert at Willis’s Rooms. In July 1850 he appeared in a concert with the German pianist and composer Belleville d’Oury, following which the music critic of The Times wrote that Lefort was ‘a French barytone [who] has produced an agreeable sensation in several concerts this season.