Mendès, Catulle (1841–1909)

French poet, novelist, playwright, and librettist. He was one of Les Parnassiens, and founded La Revue fantaisiste 1861. His poems include Philoméla 1864, Poésies 1876, 1885, and 1892, Hesperus 1872, and La Grive des vignes 1895. He also wrote plays, novels, and critical works, such as Richard Wagner (1886), L'Art au théâtre (1897–1900), and Le Mouvement poétique français de 1867 à 1900 (1903).

Mendès wrote libretti for several composers, including Chabrier, Messager, Pierné, Pessard, Massenet, and Debussy. Debussy's work, Rodrigue et Chimène, was never finished. He married Judith Gautier (1850–1917), with whom he visited Richard Wagner at Triebschen in Switzerland in 1869. She had an affair with Wagner seven years later at Bayreuth, during the first production of the Ring.

Mendès's plays include Médée (1898) and Glatigny (1906), and his novels Mephistophela (1890) and La Maison de la vieille (1894).

See also Bruneau (Chansons à danser and Lieds de France), Gwendoline (Chabrier), d'Indy (Médée), Leroux (Reine Fiammette).