TOSTÉE, Lucille - French opéra-bouffe star who led the export of the genre to America.

 Although Lucille Tostée was to make the most famous part of her career in America, she began her life on the stage in France, becoming one of Offenbach's principal interpreters at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens at a young age. Amongst her assignments at the Bouffes, she played Scipionne in Les Vivandières de la grande armée (1859), L'Étoile in Le Roman comique (1861) and the original version of the page, Amoroso, in his Le Pont des soupirs (1861). She donned skirts to play Béatrix in the Parisian version of Les Bavards (1863) but went back into travesty in the rôle of Fabricio in Il Signor Fagotto (1864). She also appeared with the Bouffes company at Vienna's Theater am Franz-Josefs-Kai in 1861 (Croute-au-pot in Mesdames de la Halle, Fanchette in Une nuit blanche, Pierrette in La Rose de Saint-Flour, Atala in Vent du soir) and in 1862 (Dorothée in La Bonne d'enfants etc). Following the advent of Zulma Bouffar in his life and theatre, Tostée apparently found less favour in Offenbach's eyes, but her career did not by any means go downwards as a result.

 In 1867 Lucille Tostée headed a troupe exported from Paris under the management of H L Bateman to play French opéra-bouffe at New York's Théâtre Français. On 24 September she opened in America as Offenbach's Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein and she took the town by storm, launching at the same time the craze for opéra-bouffe which was to sweep the country over the following years. One critic rhapsodised "The new o-b's a brilliant success, the music most sparklin, allow us to state man, and while they've Miss Tostée to play 'La Duchesse', there's no grounds for fearing the crowds will a-Bate-man'.
 She appeared throughout the United States in that season and the next in a variety of such pieces including La Belle Hélène, Lischen et Fritzchen, as Eurydice in Orphée aux enfers, and in her original rôle from Les Bavards, sharing the top billing in later days with Mlle Irma, who had been starring in an opposition production of Barbe-bleue and who amalgamated her forces with Bateman's to reinforce a company which was by that time being challenged for opéra-bouffe supremacy by a team brought out by Jacob Grau and headed by Rose Bell, Marie Desclauzas and Gabel.

 Equipped with some fairly dubious advertising -- Tostée's Eurydice was described as `her original rôle played by her 300 nights in Paris' -- the pair continued, increasing their repertoire with such pieces as Monsieur Choufleuri (with Tostée in the vocally demanding rôle of Ernestine), Le Mariage aux lanternes, La Chanson de Fortunio (Valentin) and Maillart's Les Dragons de Villars. When Tostée left America after less than two years, the flood that she and La Grande-Duchesse had begun continued in the hands of such other French artists as Irma, Marie Aimée, Léa Silly, Céline Montaland, Marie Desclauzas, Coralie Geoffroy, Louise Théo and Palola-Marié, as well as their English-language followers. And Tostée herself? She went home, and there apparently just vanished from theatrical annals.  ....K.G.

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