Max Bouvet

A French baritone who created roles by Chabrier, Lalo, Massenet and Bruneau, and a landscape painter whose work the French state bought. He left the Paris Conservatoire without being admitted to its examinations, sang at the Eldorado café-concert and in operetta, and joined the Opéra-Comique as Figaro in 1884. There he created Henri de Valois in Le roi malgré lui, Karnac in Le roi d'Ys and the Bishop of Blois in Esclarmonde, and was the first Paris Marcel in La bohème. At the Théâtre de la Monnaie he created Spendius in Reyer's Salammbô. He taught at the Conservatoire until 1911.