Twenty-seven opéras-comiques, among them “Zampa” in 1831: its overture stayed in the repertoire long after the opera left it. Tuberculosis carried off Méhul's pupil at forty-one. Cut from a soft, frost-prone limestone, his monument fell apart: every inscription is gone.
The story
Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold was born in Paris on 28 January 1791. A pupil of Étienne Méhul — whose column stands in the same alley — he won the grand Prix de Rome in 1812.
His career began in Italy as pianist to Joachim Murat, king of Naples. Back in Paris, he was chorus master at the Théâtre-Italien in 1824, then deputy conductor at the Opéra in 1827.
He wrote twenty-seven comic operas. “Zampa, or the Marble Bride”, in 1831, and “Le Pré-aux-Clercs”, in 1832, were both resounding successes: the overture to Zampa stayed in the orchestral repertoire long after the opera had left it.
A knight of the Legion of Honour in 1828, he died of tuberculosis on 19 January 1833, at forty-one — nine days short of his birthday — five weeks after the first night of “Le Pré-aux-Clercs”.
His monument in Division 13 was cut from a soft limestone that takes the frost and flakes away. The bas-relief with its lyre has gone, and the inscriptions with it: today it is a stone without a word on it, next to Pleyel's and to the column of Méhul, his master.
The grave
The monument is cut from a soft, frost-prone limestone — a stone that takes in water, freezes and bursts — and it crumbles away, decade after decade. The result is striking: every inscription is gone, and with them the bas-relief of a lyre that the cemetery's old postcards still show. There is nothing left to read on the composer's grave, a few yards from the column of Méhul, his master, and from Pleyel's plaque. It is the only monument in this guide whose text the weather erased entirely.
On site, do not miss
A mute stone: look, on the crumbling limestone, for the place where the name and the lyre once were.
Visitors' questions
Where is Ferdinand Hérold's grave?
In Division 13, chemin Méhul, first row — a few metres from the column of Étienne Méhul, his teacher, and from Ignace Pleyel's plaque. The stone itself no longer bears a single legible inscription.
Étienne-Nicolas MéhulWhy is there no inscription left?
Because the monument was cut from a soft, frost-prone limestone that freezes and crumbles. Every inscription has vanished, and with it a bas-relief of a lyre still visible on old postcards.
Claude ChappeWhat is “Zampa”?
His most famous opéra-comique, first performed in 1831: “Zampa ou la Fiancée de marbre” — Zampa, or the Marble Bride. The overture stayed in the orchestral repertoire long after the work itself had left it, and is still played today.
François-Adrien BoieldieuWho was his teacher?
Étienne Méhul, the composer of the “Chant du départ”, whose column stands in the same path a few metres from his grave. Hérold won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1812, then became pianist to Murat in Naples.
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