French writer, playwright and librettist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jules Moinaux, real name Joseph-Désiré Moineaux or Moineau[1] (24 October 1815 – 4 December 1895) was a 19th-century French writer, playwright, and librettist. Georges Courteline, whose civil status name was Georges Moinaux (or Moineau), was his son.
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The son of Joseph-Jacques Moineau, a cabinetmaker in Tours, Jules Moinaux began with learning the trade from his father. But soon, he preferred to live by his pen, and became a journalist and a writer-reporter at Palais de Justice, Paris.
By the late 1840s, he began writing, very often in collaboration, comic pieces that found success. In 1853, he wrote Pépito, an opéra comique for Jacques Offenbach, and in 1855, again for Offenbach, Les Deux Aveugles, a musical buffoonery.
In 1866, his comedy Les Deux Sourds was created at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris. During the Franco-Prussian War, while he volunteered for the Fédération de la Garde nationale[fr], he had an opéra bouffe, Le Canard à trois becs, presented with great success at the Folies-Dramatiques.
His judicial chronicles of the Criminal Court, written with verve for La Gazette des tribunaux, Le Charivari, etc., were collected in 1881 under the title Les Tribunaux comiques. His son Courteline sometimes drew inspiration from these for some of his own plays.
His satire of the police community, Le Bureau du Commissaire, was published in 1886 with a preface by Alexandre Dumas fils.
Le Monde ou l'on rit, his last work, was published in 1895. That collection of sketches featured among others Le Sourd qui n'avoue pas, On demande un malade gai, Le Rapia de Champigny, and L'Homme aux goûts champêtres.
"Moinaux or Moineau? The surname appears never to have been finally determined. Joseph-Désiré's father enrolled his son as Moineau but himself signed Moinaux. An uncle, born in 1826, is registered under the name of Morinaux and opted later for Moineaux... Later generations used indifferently Moinaux or Moineau, without the choice being ever meaningful. " Emmanuel Haymann, Courteline, Flammarion, 1990
