Gustave Vaëz

Gustave Vaëz was a Belgian librettist and translator who did most of his work in Paris in partnership with Alphonse Royer. Turning from law to the stage, he wrote some thirty plays, comédies-vaudevilles and librettos, often with Royer. Together they translated Italian operas into French, Lucia di Lammermoor among them, wrote Donizetti's La favorite, and adapted I Lombardi for Verdi as Jérusalem. Alone he wrote Donizetti's Rita. He joined the management of the Théâtre de l'Odéon in 1853 and was deputy director of the Paris Opéra from 1856 to 1860.