André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri
1859-1863
Louis-Henri Obin in Mo´se et Pharaon

Carte de visite
Paul Frecker
Louis-Henri Obin dressed for the role of Moses in Rossini's Mo´se et Pharaon, ou Le Passage de la Mer Rouge.
 
Born in 1820, lyric bass Louis-Henri Obin made his début on the stage on 6 December 1844 at the Grand Opéra in Paris, in the r¶le of Lord Seyton for the creation of the opera Marie Stuart by Niedermeyer (Some references place his début in September of the same year as Brabanio in Rossini's Otello).
 
Although he took over as first bass from Levasseur in 1852, it is from 1855 that he began to leave his real mark on the history of opera, with the creation on 13 June of the first Grand Opéra a la Franþaise written by Verdi specifically for Paris, Les Vêspres Siciliennes, in which he took the r¶le of Procida. He followed this on 4 March 1859 with the Première of Felicien David's Herculanum and then on 9 March 1860 with Pierre de Medicis, composed by the Polish prince Josef Poniatowski, a work which enjoyed an enormous success in its time.
 
On 28 April 1865 he took part in the Première of Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, which such other Parisian greats of the age as Marie Sasse, Marie Battu, Emilio Naudin et Jean-Baptiste Fauré. On 11 March 1867, he created the r¶le of Philippe II in Verdi's last great Parisian opera Don Carlos, with Marie Sasse as Elisabeth de Valois and Jean-Baptiste Fauré as Rodrigue.
 
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