# 26342
HUGO, Victor (1802-1885) (words); LABARRE, T. (Théodore) (music)
[SHEET MUSIC; TAHITI] La fille d’Otaïti : romance.
$250.00 AUD
Paroles de Victor Hugo. Musique et acct. de piano de T. Labarre. Prix 2 f. Paris : E. Troupenas et Cie., [1835]. Folio (330 x 250 mm), disbound bifolium, 4 pp (including wrappers), front with a lithographed illustration by Formentin et Cie. depicting a Tahitian woman seducing a European man, calligraphic title in different fonts and publisher’s imprint, two pages of music notation (arrangement for voice and piano), last side blank; spine with old paper reinforcement, small loss at bottom corners and a couple of short edge tears, and light creasing; wet stamp of original music seller Souchette, Place des Halles d’Angers to front.
‘In addition to teaching the Tahitians to read and write in their own language, the British forbade traditional dancing, an integral element of Tahitian culture and storytelling. They also overthrew traditional Tahitian government, establishing the reign of the successive Pomarés, under whose rule Tahiti became a French colony in 1880. Despite the changes in the brief British rule, many well-known nineteenth-century French authors sustained the mythical image of Tahiti in their works. Chateaubriand laments the transformations that Tahiti underwent under British rule in Génie du Christianisme, and Victor Hugo wrote a poem entitled La fille d’Otaïti, included in his 1826 collection Odes et Ballades….’ (Julia L. Frengs. Corporeal Archipelagos: Writing the Body in Francophone Oceanian Women’s Literature. Lanham, MD : Lexington Books, 2017, p. 4)
Trove locates no example of this sheet music (which was published in various editions) in Australian collections.